Non-injury fire at Corbin High School sends students home

A fire in the mechanical room of Corbin High School Wednesday morning has cancelled school for the remainder of that day at the high school location only.

Nathan Kirby, Public Affairs Liaison for the Corbin Fire Department said, “We were called out to a general fire alarm, which happens at this building kind of frequently, but we don’t like to get complacent and think that it’s just going to be a false alarm. We like to treat every fire alarm as an emergency.”

“We were notified that it was in the kitchen area, so we went to that area and found that there was a little bit of smoke in there. One of the school staff then points out that there is a lot of smoke coming from the basement. We have a thermal imaging camera that shows where heat is, so we took it down there and it shows up on the water heater.”

“When we unscrewed the panel on the unit there were some flames, so we just used a water can to put that out. It was a pretty simple job. The smoke makes it seem a lot worse than it really is, plus I think someone used an extinguisher in the basement before we got here, and those types of powder cans can make it seem like there’s a lot of smoke when it’s really just the chemical from the extinguisher.”

Students were evacuated from the school building once the fire was detected, and were later sent home as a precautionary measure related to the air quality in the building. An all call has gone out to parents to inform them of the situation.