Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
A fire destroyed a drier in the Sweet Home High School laundry room at about 7 a.m. on Oct. 19.
“After about the fourth extinguisher, Don (Frick) said, ‘I’m calling the fire department,'” laundry operator and custodian Joyce Burdine said.
Early in the morning, another custodian shut off the drier, which had a load of mops. Burdine said, she came in later. She put her hand on the mops, and they were cool.
She left to work in another part of the building. She returned to the area to clean the choir room across the hall from the laundry room. She smelled smoke and checked out the laundry room.
She opened the drier door and found a fire burning inside, Burdine said. She said she knocked down the fire with the laundry room fire extinguisher, but the fire quickly came back up. She went and grabbed another from the custodian break room up the hall and used it. It had the same result.
“I came around the corner wondering what was going on,” said Frick, the head custodian. He grabbed the extinguisher from the stage and used it for the same result. That’s when he left to call the fire department.
“It was an old drier,” Frick said.
The drier uses an open gas flame above the drum to dry laundry, Burdine said.
They do not know whether the motor caught fire, whether lint was ignited or what caused the fire, Frick said.
A replacement drier will cost between $10,000 and $15,000, Frick said.
The new drier will be computerized and enclosed, Burdine said.
All district laundry is done in the high school laundry room, Burdine said. Laundry can include uniforms, PE towels, mops and anything else that needs washing in the district.