WESTFIELD – A Westfield High School senior – and volunteer firefighter – is being credited with extinguishing a smoky fire in a school hallway yesterday morning.
Firefighters and police responded to a 9:59 a.m. pull-station alarm at the school but the responding firefighters found little to do when they arrived thanks to the quick work of Joe Graydon, a senior at the school and a member of the junior officer program of the Huntington Volunteer Fire Department.
Det. Lt. David Ragazzini reported that the fire originated in a trash barrel located in the foyer of a rear entry on the north side of the school near the rear doors of the cafeteria and auditorium. He said that when the fire was discovered by a teacher, a pull-station alarm was activated and the school was evacuated.
The natural evacuation route for some of the students took them right past the burning barrel on their way to the rear door and one of them took action.
“I think the kid did a noble thing,” said State Trooper Michael Mazza, a fire investigator attached to the state Fire Marshal’s office.
Mazza explained that Graydon thought quickly and, grabbing a fire extinguisher, “hit it (the fire) with an extinguisher and then dragged it (the barrel) out” of the building.
There, Ragazzini said, Graydon used snow to completely extinguish the fire.
Mazza had nothing but praise for the boy who, he said, has enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps’ delayed entry program and will depart for boot camp after his high school graduation.
“I think what the kid did was awesome,” he said.
The Westfield Fire Department responded to the alarm with Engines Three and Four and the department’s tower truck.
The firefighters ventilated smoke from the school’s back hallways.
Ragazzini reported the investigation by himself, Mazza and Westfield Deputy Fire Chief Patrick Eggloff identified a suspect and the 16-year-old juvenile boy has been arrested on charges of being delinquent by reason of attempting to burn a public building and for being delinquent by reason of disturbing a school.
His case will be heard in Holyoke Juvenile Court which does not make public its findings.
