Small fire in Cathedral of Learning

Pitt police and city fire departments responded to a small fire in the Cathedral of Learning… Pitt police and city fire departments responded to a small fire in the Cathedral of Learning this afternoon, which was put out by the building’s sprinkler system.

Police said that the fire, caused by a cigarette in a trash can, triggered the sprinkler system in one of the wood shops in the basement of the building. Ventilation systems in the basement caused smoke to spread to a number of floors and made the inside of the ground floor hazy.

Five city fire trucks responded at about 3:45 this afternoon, and all had left by about 5 p.m.

A city fire battalion chief said that most of the difficulty was in turning the sprinkler system off. The sprinkler system was still on for about a half hour after the the fire department responded to the call, and the fire department worked with building maintenance to shut them off.

For more than an hour after the alarm went off, building maintainance employees emptied vacuums filled with water from the flooded shop by the basement entrance. There was still standing water up to half an inch deep on several dozen feet of hallway in the Cathedral’s basement, on the Fifth Avenue side, after the alarm was shut off after 6 p.m.