Staff photo / Ed Runyan Youngstown firefighters on the roof of Ward Beecher Hall and the planetarium at Youngstown State University on Monday afternoon pull apart some of the roof where smoke is seen. Other firefighters are on a lower level roof of the building. A university official said it appeared the fire started in the area where the ladder is located.

YOUNGSTOWN — Damage from fire, smoke and water is being assessed at Ward Beecher Hall and its planetarium at Youngstown State University following a Monday afternoon roof blaze.

City firefighters responded within minutes to the science classroom building. Battalion Chief Jimmy Drummond said the fire began when a roofing company tried to fix a small leak on the flat portion of the building’s roof.

“The roofing company was using a torch to help patch the repair. It got up behind the metal roofing and got into the plywood but it didn’t extend into the building too far,” Drummond said.

Drummond said firefighters wet the building to drown the fire before placing tarps inside to lessen water damage.

Curt Spivey, Ward Beecher Planetarium engineer, said the fire apparently began about 12:30 p.m. on the exterior of the building, a portion that holds “mechanicals,” such as electrical systems and heating and ventilation.

The fire moved in the direction of the planetarium and did some damage there, he said.

Spivey noted some of the material that can be seen, now pulled away from the building, is the original copper dome from 1967.

STUDENTS GOT OUT

Monday was the first day of spring semester classes. An introductory-level astronomy class was in the building when the fire started.

Spivey said a professor teaching in the planetarium indicated people started to smell smoke about 12:30 p.m. and the fire alarms went off. He said probably 90 students or more were in the building at the time, and everyone got out safely with no injuries.

Amanda Keating, a junior physics and astronomy major, said she was in the building when the alarm went off. She was not in the planetarium but was down the hallway. Students saw smoke coming from the planetarium, so they exited the building through a side door.

“We saw the hallway filled with smoke,” she said. “We didn’t think twice. We just said we need to get out of here.”

Student Alessandra Montanez said she saw the fire first from the outside of the building. There were flames on the roof, then they moved up.

Firefighters were peeling back pieces of metal off of the structure, she said.

“I saw flames coming, and the smoke was really bad at the top,” she said. She started videotaping the flames and smoke about 1 p.m.

EQUIPMENT COSTS

The inside of the building had smoke and some water damage. Spivey said he hopes the fire did not cause a lot of damage to the more than $1 million of equipment in the planetarium.

There is a “$500,000 star ball, a $750,000 video system, plus the seats, plus the carpet, the digital surround sound. We don’t know what has been damaged with that,” he said.

There also is some concern for some of the sound-system speakers because they are “up behind the dome.”

He added that “fortunately most of the equipment is the back of the room away from where the fire was.”

Spivey said it does not appear there was a great deal of flame, mostly smoke.

“The fire department got here real fast. We got everybody out of the building. The fire department was here by then,” he said.

John P. Hyden, associate vice president, facilities and support services, was assessing the damage inside the planetarium with representatives from SERVPRO disaster recovery services.

Hyden said the water came through as firefighters were tearing off the roofing.

A damage estimate on the building is not yet available but Hyden anticipates “it’s not going to be cheap.”

“The projection dome will have to be assessed but it likely will need replaced or repaired. It’ll take a lot of assessing, but we’re going to get things cleaned up for tonight to prevent further damage,” Hyden said.

Classes were canceled for the rest of the day in Ward Beecher but are scheduled to resume there at 8 a.m. today.