GRANTSVILLE — Third-grade teacher Megan Grover was in her classroom at Grantsville Elementary when the school's secretary rushed in screaming "Fire! Fire!"
Grover grabbed her son and ran for the exit. When she reached the hallway, smoke had already filled the building.
"There were flames, lots of flames," said Grover, who also teaches fourth grade.
School was not in session when the fire started just before 10 a.m. in the teachers' lounge of the school at 175 W. Main. Two custodians and two teachers, who had some of their own children with them, were in the building at the time. They all escaped without injuries.
Investigators believe the fire was an accident that originated from a stove in the teachers' lounge, said Grantsville Fire Capt. Brent Marshall. Damage was contained to that area, but smoke damaged the entire school.
When firefighters arrived, "there were flames coming out of the roof and the window of the teachers' lounge," he said.
Marshall said the fire burned freely for seven minutes before the first engine attacked the building from the exterior with water. It took only a few minutes for firefighters to subdue the flames once on scene, he said.
About 75 firefighters arrived from three different departments to battle the blaze.
Children and parents gathered on the front lawn to see the scorched brick and blown-out windows. The teachers' lounge was left in disrepair, with mangled and charred air vents dangling overhead and water gushing out of the sink.
Karen Arndall, a parent of two children at the school, came with her children when she heard about the fire on the radio.
"It's kind of emotional," she said. "This is your kids' community. Hopefully, it'll all be fixed in time."
Meraya Marshall, a fourth-grader at the school, tried to imagine what it would be like to start school in only six weeks.
"It's going to be really weird," she said. Her future classroom was one of the rooms left with smoke damage.
Tooele School District Superintendant Terry Linares said that a rebuild of the school will include a sprinkler system to help prevent future fires.
A fire-break wall made of two brick barriers built side by side contained the initial blaze in the lounge, preventing it from spreading to the neighboring library and other classrooms. Linares said it was a structural lesson learned from a fire that leveled Grantsville High School in 1984.
At noon, crews were still dousing some of the hot spots that remained inside the school, but Linares and Marshall said school will resume as planned on Aug. 24.
"Although it's a tragedy, we've got time for the school district to be able to do some things to get school started on time," he said. Apart from empty space in other sections of the school, the district has vacant trailers available.
The state fire marshal won't have a damage estimate until tonight, since they're bringing in engineers to take a closer look at the destruction before determining the cost, Capt. Marshall said.
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