$2-Million Fire Destroys School Records

A spectacular fire early Tuesday gutted a school district warehouse in Simi Valley, causing at least $2 million in damage and destroying irreplaceable school records, officials said.

The district, with 18,000 students and 26 schools, is the largest in Ventura County.

A cause has not yet been determined for the fire, the third this year at Simi Valley Unified School District and the most destructive in terms of the materials and records lost.

More than 80 firefighters battled the blaze for 2 1/2 hours before controlling it, said Ron Taylor, a Ventura County Fire Deparment spokesman. There were no injuries reported and no one was inside the 20,000-square-foot concrete structure when the fire was discovered at 4 a.m., authorities said. The two-story, 17-year-old building is directly behind the district’s administrative headquarters.

“The fire undoubtedly burned for quite a while before we got our first call because it had already gone through the roof when the first unit got on the scene,” Taylor said. The roof collapsed, requiring extra precautions to be taken because several hundred gallons of toxic chemicals, mostly for use in photocopy machines, were stored inside, Taylor said.

District officials estimated the damage and loss of supplies and equipment stored in the building at about $2 million but said the figure could go higher.

Instructional materials, including thousands of textbooks and hundreds of educational films used at the district’s 26 schools, were destroyed, said Associate Supt. Allan Jacobs. Food for the district’s cafeterias was also destroyed.

But school officials said the biggest loss was of student records, which, they said, date to 1890, when the district was formed. Student records from 1985 to the present are kept at the individual schools.

Jacobs said that although the district may have duplicates of some old student records, others would be irreplaceable.

School officials said a number of local businesses have offered to help the district.

Mary Beth Wolford, assistant superintendent for business and property management, said the district will “be working with our insurance firm to decide what we are going to do long-range. It will probably take a year to 18 months to rebuild another facility.”

Wolford said the district’s purchasing and food service departments will work with the warehouse staff to determine the district’s needs over the next few weeks.

It has been a tough year for the district, which recently underwent $8 million in budget cuts that included dozens of layoffs. Several top administrators also have left the district in the last few months, including Supt. John Duncan. Duncan, who served as chief administrator of the district for 16 years, resigned in September to head a school district in Northern California.

The district is still recovering from two fires at schools this year. A fire in April at Park View Center School, a training facility for teachers and administrators, caused $250,000 in damage. The fire was blamed on faulty wiring.

An arson at Madera Elementary in August caused $150,000 in damage.