Fire at Ocoee High School evacuates students, staff

Students and staff at Ocoee High School were evacuated from the campus' buildings due to a fire that was started in one of the school's upstairs restrooms. 

Ocoee Fire Department officials have confirmed no one was injured due to the fire and their initial belief is the fire originated in a trash can. Though the investigation into the cause of the fire is ongoing, it was confirmed that the fire seems to have been started by pieces of toilet paper being lit on fire.

The school's automatic fire alarm alerted the firefighters at 9:12 a.m.

"This morning we got a dispatch that came out originally as an automatic fire alarm," Ocoee Fire Chief Tom Smothers said. "On the way, we got updates from the SRO, the student resource officer, that there was actually smoke in the hallway. ... When our crews arrived, outside there's (no smoke) showing but when they made entry and did notice that there was light smoke in the hallways." 

At the time that the fire crew arrived, Smothers confirmed that the building was already being evacuated and the trash can fire had already been somewhat extinguished. 

"As (the crew) did their search in there, they found on the upstairs in one of the bathrooms, there was a trashcan that still had smoldering smoke coming out of it," Smothers said. "Somebody had lit something, I think it was like two or three rolls of toilet paper in the trashcan. I believe one of the staff had actually extinguished it before we got there ... but it was still smoldering when we got there, so we were able to knock it out the rest of the way and take it outside."

At the time of the interview, Fire Chief Smothers confirmed that Ocoee Fire Department officials were still on scene with Orange County officials. 

"Our fire marshal's actually still on scene over there with the county officials, the school board officials and (are) kind of doing their investigation right now to see how it started because obviously it didn't start by itself," he said.