Pleasant Valley High School caught on fire two times in one night in April of this year. Now Chico Fire Department investigators say they know what caused at least one of them.
"The first fire, the probability is that it was electrical in nature," said Fire Marshal Paul Ricketts. "We [found] a few items in that area, and we were not able to definitively identify which item it was."
The second fire started over an hour later in a nearby attic. Investigators have two theories as to how it started.
"One being that an ember traveled through a HVAC duct in the wall," Ricketts said. "That ember would have gotten in there and smoldered for a while, hence the time delay for the second fire."
The second theory is that it was started by the same electrical event as the first fire, since the classroom and attic are connected by a conduit.
"Our hypothesis on that one is that one electrical event started both fires. One presented itself quickly, the other one smoldered up in the attic and then took off later," Ricketts said.
The fires were quickly contained, and didn't spread to other buildings on campus. The burned buildings are still closed, but the rest of the Pleasant Valley High School campus is operational.
