San Juan Capistrano : School Janitor Injured in Transformer Fire

A custodian at San Juan Elementary School suffered smoke inhalation in a brief fire Thursday morning that resulted from an exploding electrical transformer outside the school.

Kathleen Cha, a spokeswoman for the County Fire Department, said the custodian, who was not identified, was treated and released at Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viego.

Cha said the transformer, which was on a pole in front of the school at 26891 Spring St., exploded about 8 a.m. “It started a very small fire on the pole and in some grass at the base of the pole,” Cha said. She said the custodian extinguished the blaze with a garden hose.

The Fire Department’s Hazardous Materials Team came to the scene because of fears that the transformer may have been an old model which used the chemical PCB, a cancer-causing material. Cha said that tests by the team and the county Health Care Agency later determined that the oil inside the transformer contained no PCB but instead was a safe “vegetable oil product.”