Sprinklers absent from Newport-Mesa school labs

Danette Goulet

NEWPORT-MESA -- Like UC Irvine, the Newport-Mesa Unified School

District does not have sprinkler systems in its science labs. And it’s no

oversight, officials say.

“Some of the things they do in there can be ignited by the oxygen in

water,” said Eric Jetta, director of facilities and maintenance

operations for the district. “So designers of that [UCI] building

designed it not to have water sprinklers.”

An explosion and fire erupted in a UCI chemistry lab on Monday when

graduate student Cy Fujimoto, 28, was purifying benzene.

When the experiment exploded, Fujimoto suffered second-degree burns to

his face, arms and right leg.

He was taken to the UC Irvine Regional Burn Center in Orange, where he

was listed in good condition.

Though the buildings apparently met fire codes at the time they were

built, more than two-thirds of the buildings at UCI do not have sprinkler

systems, officials said.

While Newport-Mesa officials offer no guarantees against fire, all of

the schools are up to code, Jetta said.

“It’s required for us to keep schools up to code, and two of our

schools -- Andersen [Elementary School] and Estancia [High School] -- do

have a wet sprinkler system,” he said. “We haven’t had any fires here --

I’ve been here 12 years -- except in a teachers’ lounge. That lounge did

not have sprinklers.”

Most of Newport-Mesa’s science labs do not have sprinklers, but they

all have fire extinguishers, Jetta said.

“Most of the chemicals we have there are fairly small in volume, and

we’re not doing the types of experiments in our science labs that

somebody in a doctoral program at UCI is doing,” said Mike Fine,

assistant superintendent of business services. “We do clean the labs with

chemicals periodically and have to dispose of any hazardous chemicals. As

you can imagine, some chemicals in and of themselves are not hazardous,

but if we dump them all in the same container they may be hazardous.”

The school district pays a company to remove all chemicals, Fine

added.