By Khalida Sarwari
Arson investigators have finished combing through an elementary school razed by a five-alarm fire Monday morning, but the fire’s cause has not yet been determined, a fire spokesman said today.
Investigators are still treating the fire at Trace Elementary School as suspicious, fire Capt. Chuck Rangel said.
“As the investigation continues, we are still in the process of looking at all potential causes, including accidental as well as intentional,” Rangel said.
The San Jose Fire Department is heading the investigation.
The first phase began at the school site Tuesday and involved sifting through and examining piles of debris and tracing accelerants and other evidence, Rangel said.
He said investigators did not identify any obvious accidental heat sources during the preliminary investigation.
The fire was reported at about 4:20 a.m. Monday and controlled just after 2:40 p.m. At the fire’s peak, about 100 people were helping fight the blaze, Rangel said.
One firefighter strained a muscle, but no other injuries were reported.
The school’s 28,000-square-foot campus suffered an estimated $10 million worth of damage, school district spokeswoman Karen Fuqua said.
The San Jose Unified School District held an emergency meeting on Monday and assured parents that school will begin as scheduled on Aug. 16.
Classes will be conducted on the Trace campus, most likely in portable classrooms, Fuqua said.
Additional community meetings will be held, but the details have not been determined, Fuqua said.
In the meantime, a donation fund has been established at the school district’s office, located at 855 Lenzen Ave., where the community can donate money and books for the school.
On Tuesday, Wells Fargo bank contributed $25,000.
Donations are also pouring in from various San Jose bookstores, from teachers at other schools, and from other school districts, Fuqua said.
“We’re getting great support from the community,” she said. “It touches your heart.”
Hicklebee’s Children’s Books is offering discounts of up to 60 percent on book purchases made for the school.
Volunteers with the San Jose-based nonprofit Role Model Program are doing an outreach campaign to find books for Trace.
The Recycle Book Store is giving each of the teachers who lost a classroom a $150 gift certificate.
Single-story classrooms for first, second, and third grades were all destroyed, although the new two-story portion of the school containing grades three through five was saved, in addition to several portable classrooms, Rangel said.