Once on scene, firefighters upgraded the call to a commercial fire response, bringing in police, emergency medical support and mutual aid from neighboring areas.

“It takes a lot of people to tackle a building this size, so every resource is utilized,” said Eddie Hales, the new chief of the Spanish Fork Fire Department.

According to Hales, responders were told upon arriving to the school that there was a fire inside of the wood shop’s hopper, a large steel bin used to store sawdust and wood chips from the shop.

A welder for the Nebo School District was attempting to repair a small piece of the hopper on the outside; however, the material at the bottom of the hopper lit on fire, spreading smoke throughout the school with the HVAC system. As of 3 p.m., there were still units ventilating the school.

Harrison Epstein, Daily Herald

The ventilation system for the hopper, according to Hales, bring materials into the hopper and not out. “There was never any chance of the fire extending back into the building, it was just smoke product,” Hales said.

With the fire contained, there was no damage to other parts of the school. The smell of smoke was first recognized in the shop class not by teacher Mark Roberts, but by his students.

“I didn’t know what they were smelling at first and I thought maybe it was just fumes from the welder. Then I saw it was coming through vents on the inside of the classroom,” Roberts said.

While the students’ reaction was slow at first, Roberts said the students stayed calm and handled everything well.

“The fire alarms just went off and we all thought it was a drill so we weren’t very freaked out. We all just went to the door and left, went out where our class was supposed to be,” student Tanner Nelson said. Not one of the woodshed students, Nelson and his class went outside to their designated area, but he eventually decided to investigate for himself.

Harrison Epstein, Daily Herald

He went toward the shop to see clouds of smoke and the arrival of the Fire Department. Nobody, Nelson said, was fully aware of what was happening until students began texting one another about the fire.

At around 2 p.m., with 30 minutes left in the school day and everybody already outside, students were told they could leave and go home early. Despite that, he, along with Roberts and a smattering of other students and faculty members stuck around.

Coming out of the incident, Roberts had two questions at the front of his mind. The first: Why were welders working on the hopper during the school day, instead of after and without any students in the building? In the moment, though, he chalked it up to the size of the job. With only a small patch to repair, Roberts said he felt it was likely that nobody “thought it was that big of a deal.”

The other question focused on his class and his students. He was unsure when they will be able to use their machines again as the school heads into the fourth term.

Without the hopper, some of the machines can’t be used at all and could leave projects unfinished.

Harrison Epstein, Daily Herald

“It could shut me down the rest of the year,” Roberts said. ” There’s some of the students’ projects in there that are probably — I don’t know if totally ruined, but there’s definitely some work on them.”

It was the school’s sprinkler system that affected those projects. Grateful that the sprinklers worked, and with the first batch of water being “nasty,” Roberts expects there will be more conversations regarding safety in the future. He specifically mentioned students leaving their classes once outside, causing problems for teachers attempting to take attendance.

“You do your fire drills and then when the real thing happens these kids get excited and scatter,” Roberts said. “If nothing else, there’s going to be a lot of training coming out of this.”

One firefighter suffered what Hales called “minor” fire injuries to his face and was taken to Spanish Fork Hospital for precautionary reasons. The State Fire Marshal’s Office will handle the investigation moving forward.