COURTESY KAIPO HOOKANO, VIA KITV Some flames shot up 100 feet yesterday at Kalaheo Elementary.

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Suspicious school fire
displaces Kauai kids

Lost-and-found items
are strung up the flagpole
at Kalaheo Elementary

An early-morning fire on Kauai yesterday destroyed a historic Kalaheo Elementary School building that houses administrative offices and six classrooms.

School officials canceled classes for tomorrow, so teachers and administrators can coordinate where to place the 100 children whose classes were in the burned rooms. Also, said Kauai Complex Superintendent Daniel Hamada, "before we bring the kids back, we want everything to be safe."

Yesterday, dozens of residents gathered outside the school from around the community. Some were crying, said Kaipo Hookano, who lives across the street from the school.

He said many residents of the tight-knit neighborhood send their children to the school, attended it themselves and also have parents who went there.

"It's flattened," he said, adding that he was awakened by the strong smell of smoke from the blaze. "It's just piles of burnt wood and just totally flattened."

The school serves about 480 students from kindergarten to fifth grade and recently celebrated its 100th anniversary.

Hookano said he saw what appeared to be clothes strung up the flagpole at the school. He said firefighters later told him the clothes appeared to be from the lost-and-found bin that was kept in the burned administration building.

When firefighters arrived at the school about 3 a.m. yesterday, they found the building engulfed in flames. Fire officials could not say whether the fire was intentionally set, but police have opened their own investigation.

Hookano said flames shot up more than 100 feet. It took firefighters took more than 10 hours to extinguish the flames because the building collapsed, said Lihue Fire Department acting Battalion Chief Mitchell Ikeda.

"We had a hard time getting water on the seat of the fire," he added.

Hookano said the structure -- called Building A -- destroyed in the fire was the oldest on the current campus, possibly dating back to before World War II.

"It's quite a shock to see a historical site like that go up in flames," Hamada said.

An estimate on damages to the building and its contents was not available yesterday. But Hamada said, "it's going to be humongous. We're talking about an entire facility."

The destroyed building is one of 12 on the school's grounds, and houses classrooms for fourth- and fifth-graders along with special-needs students, Hamada said.

Also slightly damaged in the fire were two portables, which also have classrooms for special-needs students along with other programs. He said the portables will be closed off until they're repaired, but could not say how long that would take.

The school's faculty and administrators met yesterday to decide how they'd accommodate displaced students. Hamada said plans include holding class in the school's library, cafeteria and other "support staff" areas, including music and computer classrooms.

Principals from neighboring schools have also been contacted to discuss plans for donating extra textbooks, workbooks and other materials to the school.

Hamada said some irreplaceable records kept in the school's administrative office were lost, but most important documents have backups electronically or in the school district's offices.

Kalaheo students have about four more weeks before summer vacation, likely the earliest that work could start to rebuild the building lost to fire.

But Hamada said there's still some debate on what the next step should be.

"Do we bring in portables or temporary buildings until we can really go out and acquire the funding?" he asked. "Finances are difficult, and you need to plan it out."

He said that during the summer, temporary buildings will have to be brought in for administrators and summer school students.