Power Outage, Smoke Condition Leads to Delayed Openings at SPF Schools

An early morning transformer fire on Westfield Road in Fanwood knocked out power to several homes and schools in the area and caused a fire in an HVAC unit on the roof of the high school.

Three schools – the high school and Brunner and Evergreen elementary schools – had delayed openings because of the spotty power, though some students had already arrived at the high school. 

Superintendent Dr. Margaret Hayes told Patch that she was notified of the partial power situation at the three schools around 7 a.m. and had to then make a decision about whether the children could come to school. 

"Usually with partial power, we can make adjustments to what rooms kids are assigned to, in anticipation that PSE&G would restore power shortly," Hayes told Patch. "But shortly thereafter, we had an issue where there was a smoky condition that developed at the high school and we called the fire department to respond. We realized it would be better to have fewer children arriving at the same time emergency personnel were arriving, so we sent out a delayed opening message."

Hayes said some children had already arrived at the high school and were evacuated, and that the fire department found an HVAC unit on the roof of the building to be the cause. 

Hayes says they are still working out the details of exactly what happened, but that the outage and the HVAC fire are related and they haven't found any damage to the building itself.