Fire puts squeeze on Wai'anae High students

By Treena Shapiro
Advertiser Education Writer

For freshmen returning to Wai'anae High School yesterday after spring break, the possibilities offered by classrooms gutted by an electrical fire on Thursday — no school, no homework — were quickly lost in the din of three classes being taught in the library concurrently.

Wai'anae High School's vice principal, Andrew Szkotak, examines the damage from last week's electrical fire. The fire, which occurred during spring break, destroyed most of the second floor of a 10-classroom building. Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser

On the first school day of what is expected to be a full year of coping without the classrooms lost to the blaze, teachers worked at keeping their feelings under control for the students' sake. "If we start getting all emotional, then they start feeling more of a sense of loss," said history teacher Kathy Yamamoto.

Despite an official damage estimate of $750,000, principal JoAnn Kumasaka said she suspects it is more than $1 million — with the building needing to be reroofed and about $90,000 going to replace ruined textbooks.

And she noted that finding places to hold classes will be even harder next year, when she expects 130 to 150 more freshmen to enroll — another four classrooms' worth.

"I'm asking the state to provide us with more trailers," she said.

Yamamoto said it was evident students were feeling adrift without their classrooms yesterday. "They don't know where to go for lunch. They don't know where to hang out in the morning. They look a little lost," she said.

Luckily, the fire didn't destroy Yamamoto's lesson plans. "I know where I am. It's OK. It allows me to think up more innovative projects. It's not going to set me back. It's just a hassle more than anything," Yamamoto said. "It hasn't been traumatic."

Math teacher Darcy Coronil disagreed. The fire started in her room. "I lost everything," she said.

She was the last of the teachers to get to the school on Thursday after the fire. The others had been there awhile and were singing, "The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire," when she arrived. "I teared up," she said.

Coronil has been out on maternity leave and planned to return on May 11, but now she may put that off. "Ten years' worth of stuff is gone. There's nothing to come back to. It's depressing," she said.

Freshman Kim Ramos heard about the fire on the news and his first thought was "How ... are we going to fit in the library if we're all packed inside?"

His concerns were realized yesterday when he couldn't concentrate because of the noise coming from other classes.

Fellow freshman Aisha Holt also heard about the fire over spring break. "I was sad — sad for the teachers because they lost a lot of things and also for us because it would be harder for us to learn because everyone is bunched together," she said.

Her classmate Jasmine Enos wasn't upset about the fire at first. "I was thinking 'good' because maybe we wouldn't have to do so much homework, but actually it's worse because it turns out to be that we're having most of our classes in the library and it's crowded," she said.

Holt and Enos were also both concerned about the tests they had saved on the destroyed computers, and they weren't sure whether they would have to retake them. "It's half our grade," Enos said. "The tests that were with the computers were in our folders and those were burned, too."

Freshman Tyrell Silva didn't hear about the fire over the break. "I got to school today, and I saw it burned," she said.

Another challenge for principal Kumasaka is that part of the school's reform plan is to keep the freshmen isolated in an academy, with their classrooms grouped together on campus.

"If I can't get all these kids in the same area, it's going to erode," she said.

Reach Treena Shapiro at tshapiro@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8014.