60 people evacuated following fire at New Milford High School

NEW MILFORD, CT (WFSB) – Firefighters responded to a fire at New Milford High School Tuesday afternoon.

Officials said there were 30 students and 30 staff in the building when the fire started.

60 people had to evacuate the building at the time of the fire. Officials say no students or staff were injured.

Four firefighters suffered minor injuries while responding, officials said.

New Milford Mayor Pete Bass said fire departments from Brookfield, Danbury and other towns assisted battling the fire.

“Everyone got out, there were about 25 to 30 students that were in credit recovery in the building. I was notified around 2:15, by that point all students and faculty had evacuated and the fire department was on scene they were evacuating everyone from the premises asking the busses to move kids offsite which they did in a timely fashion and they got everyone home safe,” said Superintendent Alisha DiCorpo.

Officials say a janitor reported seeing smoke inside of the school

“All we know right now is that roofers were on scene when we got here and we are assuming that it possibly started from the roofing company and it took off in the eaves and got in an open area that we couldn’t get at with our aerials,” says Water Witch Fire Chief Kurt Elsesser.

Chief Elsesser says the roof sustained the majority of the damage. He says that the sprinklers never went off because the fire was on the roof, and not inside of the school.

“A lot of water damage and one section of the roof is completely off. I would say about 50 x 100 foot area of the roof is totally open,” says Chief Elsesser.

“There was no easy access and it’s all open. It’s a courtyard so it’s not like we could just put up a ladder. It’s all cathedral ceiling all the way up,” says Chief Elsesser.

Officials say they are working to figure out what the plan is for summer activities that were supposed to take place in the school.

“Move our summer programming and our credit recovery offsite. Obviously that’s going to take a little bit of work. We have to have a meeting first thing tomorrow morning to set up chrome books and everything moving in order to notify families what the next step is. We had an extended program set up for students and there were about 270 students invited into the program that was slated to start tomorrow,” says New Milford Superintendent Alisha Dicorpo.

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