The day her school burned down, Raven Levi left her basketball uniform at home in the wash.
So unlike her Kalskag teammates, she'll have the blue-and-gold jersey to wear for this weekend's basketball games. But her iPod, crammed with hip-hop songs? Her laptop and the boot she couldn't wear because she sprained her ankle?
Those things all cooked to ash at George Morgan Senior High School on Wednesday, in the blaze that school and fire officials say caused millions in damages and started in a drain on the shop-class floor.
"It was a $5 million loss at least, if not more," said Brad Allen, superintendent of the Kuspuk School District that stretches across eight Western Alaska villages. He's counting both the cost of the building itself, plus all the computers, sports equipment and other goods that students and staff had to leave behind in the flames.
The high school serves more than 50 students in the neighboring Kuskokwim River communities of Kalskag and Lower Kalskag. The students will be back to class next week.
"We're opening school Monday morning full strength," said principal Greg Wohlman, explaining that, for now, the high school kids will squeeze into the local elementary school. They'll split the day -- with the younger kids arriving early, and the older students staying late.
This is the second time a fire has destroyed the Kalskag high school in 14 years.
The previous school burned in March 1995, and the two accidental Kalskag fires have much in common.
Both times, the school had no sprinklers. Both times the local fire tanker was out of commission. Both times the blaze started in the shop area.
Investigators from the state Fire Marshal's office inspected the scene this week and found no sign of foul play.
DECADE OF MEMORIES
Here's what investigators think happened, according to Deputy Fire Marshal Kevin Hunter:
In a shop class, where students mix metal working and wood crafts, hot metal slag created by cutting metal somehow fell into a pipe in the floor.
Teachers got students out of the school and sprayed a fire extinguisher into the drain. They thought they'd solved the problem, but what they couldn't see was that the spark or slag melted the pipe and ignited a fast-burning Visqueen moisture barrier, which eventually burned the school from the ground up.
At a community meeting Thursday, elders said that the next high school, which the district hopes to build and open sometime next school year, ought to be built somewhere else for spiritual reasons, said Lower Kalskag Mayor Nick Alexie,
The school had finally started to refill its trophy case, and now another decade of memories is gone, said City Councilwoman Denise Reed.
Kelly Nicolello, assistant state fire marshal, said the village is grieving.
"The school is the city center of a village. It's where they're going to have potlatches. It's where they're going to have funerals, it's where they're going to have community gatherings, and that's no longer there."
For the second time.
NO SPRINKLERS
The 1995 Kalskag school fire came a month after the village of Fort Yukon lost its school in a fire too. Other fires destroyed schools in Mountain Village, Newtok and Wales from 1994 through 1996.
In response, fire marshals issued an emergency order calling for all large, newly built schools to include sprinkler systems. But construction of the new Kalskag high school was already in the works and didn't fall under the new mandate, Nicolello said.
It's also costly to install sprinklers in some villages because they lack communitywide water systems, he said.
Kalskag had a fire tanker nearby during the first school fire but couldn't use it because the building meant to house it, and keep it warm enough to work, wasn't finished, according to news reports at the time.
Reed, the Upper Kalskag councilwoman, said the tanker is still in the village but it was too cold to start it Wednesday.
Plus, someone apparently stole the battery, she said.
The high school was scheduled to host this year's regional basketball tournament, which rotates from village to village along the Kuskokwim. For now students like Levi will have to compete on the road.
President of the Kalskag high school student government, the 16-year-old junior talked about the fire Friday as she waited for a plane to take her to Tuluksak for basketball games later that night.
"The gym ... our Yup'ik class, my computer. I just keep seeing everything burning," she said.
Find Kyle Hopkins online at adn.com/contact/khopkins or call him at 257-4334.
By KYLE HOPKINS
khopkins@adn.com