Damage from fire at Gates School in Aurora set at around $1 million

Jul. 31--Damage to Gates Elementary School in Aurora from a fire over the weekend is now being estimated at around $1 million.

The East Aurora School District's insurance company provided the damage estimate, East Aurora School District Board President Annette Johnson said.

"The damage estimate is close to $1 million. It probably will not exceed $1 million but it will be very close to it," Johnson said.

Despite the fire, the school will be ready to open for the first day of classes in mid-August, officials said.

Aurora firefighters responded to an automatic alarm around 3 a.m. Sunday at the school on the 800 block of Seventh Avenue.

When firefighters got inside the building they encountered heavy smoke and high heat conditions and found a fire burning in a music room, fire department officials said.

The fire was confined to the music room. However, two first-grade classrooms and a large gymnasium in the same wing of the building sustained heavy smoke and water damage, officials said.

The school district found out Tuesday there were 10 nearby classrooms in that part of the building that sustained heavy smoke damage as well.

"There was a lot of smoke damage," Johnson said. "There's a lot of area that has to be sanitized and the air quality checked before school starts."

School is slated to start Aug. 14, so the timeline for restoration work to get done is tight, she said.

Everything in the music room was destroyed in the fire, including instruments and materials. Textbooks and materials will have to be replaced in the other impacted classrooms as well, officials said.

The restoration work on the two most heavily damaged first-grade classrooms, the music room and gymnasium will likely take up to December to complete, officials said.

However, the other classrooms in the building will be ready for children when they return to school in two weeks, Johnson said.

Students in the two first-grade classrooms that are being restored in the wing will utilize other rooms in the building when they come back to school.

Members of the school community have been asking what they can do to pitch in, Johnson said.

"Parents were concerned and have offered to volunteer to help," she said.

Teachers are going to help one another get their classrooms set up, Johnson said.

"Everyone is really pulling together," she said.

Gates Elementary teachers should be able to get into their classrooms by Aug. 12.

The investigation into the cause of the fire is expected to be completed around mid-August.

"It's not clear cut what happened," Johnson said. "An electrical expert is going to come out. We should have a full report in a few weeks."

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