The fire Thursday night at Ohio University's new student center might have caused up to $10,000 worth of damage, university and construction officials said.
The fire, the third at the new student center in six weeks, evidently was caused by a roofing problem.
The roofing system is attached to the structure using tar, and a problem with heating and melting that tar caused all three fires, said Bob Fredelake, a project manager for Smoot Construction, the company building the facility. Fires also broke out at the construction site Aug. 4 and Aug. 22, according to the Athens Fire Department. Fredelake said Thursday's blaze was similar in size and damage to the Aug. 4 fire, but the Aug. 22 flames were significantly smaller.
Before the Aug. 22 fire, roofers had been using a torch to heat the tar directly on the roof, but the high temperatures sometimes cause insulation material to overheat and smolder. The smoldering, which could be smelled but not seen by workers, could take several hours to break into visible flames, Fredelake said.
Roofers were told to perform fire watches
which involved smelling the area for smoke periodically during the first few hours after the tar was heated, Fredelake said.
After the second fire, roofers were told to heat the tar in containers on the ground rather than using torches, but a worker ignored that order when using a torch to repair a leaky section of the roof Thursday, said John Kotowski, associate vice president for planning and implementation at OU.
Kotowski would not identify the roofer, who worked for a company subcontracted by Smoot Construction, but said he was removed from the OU project.
We've reached an agreement Kotowski said after a meeting Friday with representatives from Smoot Construction. We will not use a torch again.
Smoot representatives will talk this week with the roofing material manufacturer to decide on a safer alternative technique to finish the 5 percent of the roofing that remains to be done.
