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It was a startling headline: Nearly half of Maine’s 715 schools lack fire sprinklers, but the state doesn’t know which ones.
This story, from St. John Valley Times and Fiddlehead Focus reporter Hannah Catlin, raised two big questions for us (and hopefully for others, especially state officials). First, how can so many schools — the buildings where Maine children and teachers spend so much time, and where taxpayers already dedicate significant resources — not have these systems in place? Second, and perhaps more puzzling, how does the state not know exactly which schools have them and which schools don’t?
As Catlin outlined in the story, the first question has a fairly straightforward explanation. Maine Department of Education spokesperson Kelli Deveaux said that more than half of Maine’s K-12 schools were built in or before the 1950s. Many of these buildings have not had major upgrades since Maine adopted the National Fire Prevention Association life safety code in the 1990s. New schools have for a few decades been required to have automatic sprinklers, but older schools are grandfathered in and haven’t had to comply with newer standards.
All of that makes sense in terms of explaining how we got here. And we understand that there are always competing education needs and finite resources to address them. But we would think that student, teacher and building safety would be a priority in budget conversations. Plus, we’re talking about an investment that can help prevent all those other education infrastructure investments from going up in smoke — literally.
What makes less sense is that neither the Maine Department of Education or state fire marshal’s office seem to have an exact list of the schools that lack fire suppression systems. How do you even begin to address an issue across the state when you don’t actually know where exactly it’s an issue?
We asked the Department of Education why they don’t have such a list, and if they could use an existing facilities survey from superintendents (in which only 56 percent reported that their schools had sprinklers) to create one. We didn’t get a response. That’s concerning. It’s one thing not to engage with us, but the state absolutely needs to engage with school districts across the state and get a clearer, specific picture of which schools don’t have these systems. This should be basic stuff.
The recent experience of two different Maine schools on the same day in late July should be very instructive for state and local officials. A fire at Westbrook High School, which has sprinklers, was limited to one room. There was smoke and water damage elsewhere in the building, but the building is still standing. The same cannot be said of the Dr. Levesque Elementary School in Frenchville, which didn’t have sprinklers and was totally lost in fire. These were different situations, in different communities, with schools of different sizes and ages. But the results are still telling.
“If the sprinklers had not been activated at [the Westbrook] school fire, instead of one room that was involved, we probably would have had multiple rooms that were fully involved and fire would have most likely gone through the roof by the time we got there,” Westbrook Fire Chief Andrew Turcotte said. “I can tell you for certain the school would not be opening this month or next month.”
In Catlin’s story, Deveaux highlighted $63 million that Gov. Janet Mills has added to the Department of Education’s School Revolving Renovation Fund and said she hopes that this funding will help older schools make upgrades to their buildings. Hope doesn’t put out fires. The state needs to be more proactive in identifying and putting resources toward fire suppression needs at schools across the state.
