Nobody smelled the smoke. That is, not until coach David Ancrum entered the gym early on Nov. 8 for his basketball training.

Ancrum looked for the source of the unpleasant odor but found nothing out of the ordinary and continued playing basketball.

At 7:15 a.m., P.E. teacher Bill Stainbrook arrived. He, too, detected the scent but, like Ancrum, could not determine its origin or any evidence of a fire.

But when he unlocked the door to the P.E. office, a cloud of fine black smoke confronted him.

“Everything was black—the air, carpet, everything. And there was soot everywhere and it stunk!” Stainbrook said.

Entering the room, he tried to pinpoint the fire’s origin. There is no air conditioning unit or vents to circulate air, so the smoke sat in the air. From floor to ceiling, the office was covered in a fine particulate.

With no sign of flame or any material burning, Stainbrook called the maintenance department and informed them that there had been some kind of fire in the P.E. office.

He then began airing out the room and clearing the smell out of the gym as well. The gym, lobby, and even the weight room all contained fumes from the fire.

But after a few minutes, Stainbrook returned to find a new scene developing in the office.

“After the ‘drafting,’ I saw two plumes of smoke. There was a very small fire burning a stack of fitness forms [next to the voice amplifier]. It was like a hay fire. Only the edges were charring, and the mass of paper prevented it from all going up in flames,” he said.

Stainbrook grabbed a fire extinguisher and sprayed everything down before dousing the scene with water.

When the actual flames were present, he pinned down the location of the fire. It came from an electrical surge protector and P.E. teacher Michelle Myers’s voice amplifier.

During the night, either the surge protector or the amplifier sparked. The plastic and foam of the amplifier slowly melted, producing acrid black smoke.

By 7:35 a.m., Stainbrook had called the fire department, which arrived to make sure that all elements of the fire were extinguished.

There were however, several longer-lasting problems.

The air in the bathrooms was so noxious that students couldn’t use the facilities. The fumes were noticeable elsewhere, and soon the entire building was shut down; not even the P.E. staff was allowed to use their office.

Most of the damage was superficial. A few papers kept in the office were thrown away. The carpet melted in places, and there was smoke damage to the desks, walls, and ceiling.

A professional fire restoration company called ServiceMaster Clean was hired within hours. They removed the items from the office and took them to a separate site for intensive cleaning.

They then replaced the carpet and cleaned and painted the walls. They also locked down the entire gym and chemically treated the air, while allowing it to circulate to get rid of the smell. All that work was completed by Nov. 11, just three days later.

But beyond the initial damage, the four computers used by the P.E. staff had sucked in a lot of soot as their filters operated; they are not operational. However, there was no structural damage, according to Stainbrook.

Luckily, no wood was next to the power strip; only the slow-burning plastic melted. Most of the other items were metal and didn’t burn.

Estimates of the damage are $10,000-15,000, according to business manager Bill Petchauer.