On the evening of April 1, a fire broke out in the dust collection system near the entrance of the MT arena.

Prior to the fire, Aaron Krause, a Tech-Ed teacher at MT, was working on one of his student’s projects. He was using the table saw, a flat surface with the top of a circular blade peaking out. Near each machine is a tube that is connected to the dust collection system, so when wood is cut the dust can be cleared efficiently.

The fire was caused when Krause unknowingly cut a piece of wood with a screw embedded in it. Krause said that “when you remove screws from a piece of wood, sometimes the top part can break off, hiding the longer part in the wood.”

When the blade struck the screw, it created a spark that ignited nearby wood debris and got sucked into the dust collection system. When Krause began to smell smoke, he realized there was a fire and ran outside with a fire extinguisher.

Soon after he called 911 and firefighters quickly responded with a total of seven trucks arriving at the scene. The fire was extinguished in about 10 minutes, and there were no known injuries because faculty and students in the vicinity were promptly evacuated.

Due to the rapid spread of smoke within the school, online learning was conducted for the remainder of the week until the air quality returned to an acceptable level.