By Ben Leubsdorf
The Concord Monitor
BRADFORD, N.H. — About 15 Kearsarge Regional School District buses were destroyed and five more damaged in an early morning fire yesterday in Bradford, the police said. The blaze is considered suspicious, the fire chief said.
The cause of the Christmas-morning fire remains under investigation, said Master Patrolman Ed Shaughnessy of the Bradford police. He said investigators are reviewing surveillance video footage from the bus yard on Breezy Hill Road.
“We’re still looking into it,” he said. “We have the investigation ongoing.”
Fire Chief Mark Goldberg said the fire is being treated as suspicious for now, “just because they sat there idle so long,” but an electrical issue hasn’t been ruled out.
Crews from Bradford, Henniker, Hillsboro, Newbury, Sutton and Warner responded to the fire just after 5 a.m., Goldberg said. The blaze was extinguished, and emergency personnel cleared the scene about two hours later, said Abigail Brown, an emergency medical technician with the Bradford Rescue Squad.
No one was hurt, and no buildings were damaged, Brown said.
The 15 destroyed buses were worth about $1 million, Shaughnessy said. They were owned by Goffstown Truck Center, which handles student transportation for the Kearsarge district.
Holly Barton, who lives next to the bus facility, called 911 after she was awakened before 5 a.m. by her dogs barking. Barton said she heard a “big explosion,” possibly from a tire, and saw the buses burning.
“They park the buses so close in the wintertime,” she said.
The state fire marshal’s office will meet with local officials today to assist with the investigation, Shaughnessy and Goldberg said.
At the scene yesterday afternoon, eight school buses parked in a row were charred and gutted by fire, windows gone and front ends totaled. A second line of buses parked behind them appeared mostly undamaged, but Shaughnessy said they were “all melted” from the heat of the fire.
More buses were parked around the lot, a couple showing fire damage but others appearing untouched. Ice coated the parking lot where firefighters had sprayed water to douse the flames.
A message seeking additional information was left yesterday for state Fire Marshal Bill Degnan.
The Kearsarge Regional School District is a sprawling district that serves nearly 2,000 students from seven towns: Bradford, Newbury, New London, Springfield, Sutton, Warner and Wilmot.
The district pays Goffstown Truck Center to provide transportation services, with the school board okaying a five-year contract in 2008.
Goffstown Truck Center, based in Goffstown, is owned by Wall, N.J.-based Student Transportation Inc., which describes itself as the third-largest school-bus provider in North America. Officials from Goffstown Truck Center and Student Transportation couldn’t be reached for comment yesterday.
The school district is working to make sure buses will be available when students return to class Jan. 3, said Dan Wolf, chairman of the Kearsarge School Board.
Wolf said Superintendent Jerome Frew was in contact yesterday with Goffstown Truck Center officials, and Frew touched base with the school board members.
“I imagine that we will have buses up and running when kids come back to school,” said Wolf, who responded to the early morning blaze as a volunteer Newbury firefighter. “Fortunately, we have a week to plan.”
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