Fire

		March 21, 1935 was a horrible day in Timnath history. It began as a normal day, but turned into a catastrophe. At eleven o'clock, a footlight in the auditorium short circuited and caught a curtain on fire. At nights, the custodians cleaned the wooden floors with an oily substance. This made the fire spread very quickly. A fourth grade class saw the fire across the hall. The first teacher who saw the fire was too short to pull the fire alarm, so she had to get a sixth grade teacher to reach it. After the alarm sounded, the whole school was evacuated in less than three minutes, and no one died or was injured. The students went either to the back fence or the front lawn thinking it was just a drill, but they looked back and saw smoke coming out of the windows. The students and teachers lost everything in the fire. Coats, hats, books, and everything else they might have were lost in the fire.
The principal went back inside the school and tried to save the school records. He was overcome by smoke and had to get out of the building. He fainted from the thick smoke and some of the students had to carry him out. The Windsor and Fort Collins fire departments came and tried to help, but they couldn't do anything to prevent the fire from burning because the water pressure wasn't powerful enough. All that they could do was keep the fire from spreading. Timnath later constructed a reservoir in case of another fire.

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School resumed four days after the fire. Organizations such as other schools, churches, and CAC (now CSU) loaned supplies. Classes were held in the church, the bank, the Fisher's home, the bus garage, and the general store (upstairs was the school and downstairs was the store). The community did whatever they could to keep the school in session, and the school finished out the year.

The principal drew the plans for the school exactly the same as it was before the fire. He knew exactly where every door was, every light switch, and the boundaries of all the rooms before it burned. The school was rebuilt exactly as it had been before the fire. The students returned to Timnath School one year after the fire.

Bilbliography
Crane, Jack. Telephone interview. 3 May 2002.
Fisher, Elsie, and Duane Fisher. Personal interview. 8 May 2002.
Miller, Del. Personal Interview. 7 May 2002.
Shader, Keith, and Barbara Shader. Personal interview. 7 May 2002.
Miller, Del, and Elise Fisher. Timnath, Fort Collins, Colorado: Columbine Club of Timnath, 1996.
Ahlbrandt, Arlene, and Kathryn Steiben. Larimer County History, Dallas: Curtis Media Corp., 1995.

About the Authors

Shawn's Research Process
I created this page when I was in the sixth grade as a part of a final choice class. I chose the Timnath School fire as a topic because I have always been interested in the fire and I wanted to learn more about it. I used the Timnath book and interviewed Del Miller, Elsie and Duane Fisher, Keith and Barbara Shader, and Jack Crane to gather information. Before I interviewed people, I had to come up with questions and put them on a interview sheet. For the first interview, I was a little nervous but after that, I was fine. I thought it was very interesting that the first teacher who tried to pull the fire alarm was too short, and she had to get the sixth grade teacher to pull it. Interviewing everybody was fun, and I learned a lot of interesting things. I would like to thank Jack Crane for letting me use his pictures on our website, and a big thanks to all of the people I interviewed for information. When I did this project, I really enjoyed learning about the school and town of Timnath

Willy's Research Process
I created the School Fire history page when I was in sixth grade as a part of a final class. I wanted to research about the fire because it sounded like an interesting thing to learn about. It also sounded like I could have fun learning about it. Our main source of information was probably the book Timnath. Some people that helped us were Jack P. Crane, Del Miller, Elsie and Duane Fisher, and Keith and Barbara Shader. Before the interview over the phone with Jack Crane we were all a little jumpy, but after I finished my interview everybody else did fairly well. It was very cool when we got to hear everybody¹s stories about the school. I would like to thank everybody that helped us during this project. I really enjoyed interviewing everybody because I could ask questions and get accurate answers.

Kevin's Research Process
I created this page when I was in the sixth grade as part of a final choice class. I chose the Timnath fire because I was interested in how everybody handled the fire and where they attended school when they were rebuilding Timnath School. My main resource was the wonderful Timnath Book by the Columbine Club. We also got great information by interviewing Jack Crane, Del Miller, Elsie and Duane Fisher, and Keith and Barbara Shader. Before we interviewed the people we wrote three questions on an interview spread sheet with space under the question to write the reply on. Before we interviewed I was practicing what to say so I wouldn't make any mistakes when asking the questions. I was a little bit nervous because we were interviewing people we didn't know. The most interesting thing that someone told me was that the first teacher that saw the fire was too short to pull the fire alarm. I thought the interviewing was very fun because I really like meeting new people.

I just want to thank everybody for helping us with our project if it weren't for the people we interviewed we wouldn't have gotten that much information. My favorite part of this project was learning about how they rebuilt the school.