Bren Mar Park Elementary School students, staff and PTA leaders gathered last Friday (May 29) to thank those who saved their school the previous month.
The full school community turned out to welcome Fairfax County Fire & Rescue Department personnel and those from Fairfax County Public Schools’ facilities team who responded to the April 19 two-alarm blaze on the roof of a new addition to the school.
“They worked so hard to make our school safe,” said Emily Nehring, who represented the school’s PTA at the ceremony.
Those on hand included fire personnel from Station 26 (Edsall Road) and Station 8 (Columbia Pike/Annandale Volunteer Fire Department) who responded to the Lincolnia-area blaze.
“We would like to express our deepest gratitude — without them, our school would not be here,” said Mason Soukphouangkham, a fifth-grade student and president of the student council.
He was joined at the presentation by student council vice president Emely Zavala, secretary Zoey Knight and treasurer Lucy So.
Elizabeth Williams, Bren Mar Park Elementary’s principal, could vividly remember the call she got that her school was on fire, with flames spreading across the roof of its addition that’s under construction.
“It was scary,” Williams said. “I didn’t know what to expect.”
To the firefighters, she expressed her thanks.
“To you, it may have seemed like another day. To us, it made a world of difference,” she said.
In the fire’s aftermath, personnel from Fairfax County Public Schools’ Facilities Department supported recovery operations and assessed the condition of the building.
They soon would be joined by the fire marshal’s office, construction crews and the custodial staff, all working as a team to address the situation.
“They literally stood with me in pools of water,” said Williams, who has been principal since 2019.
The round-the-clock effort meant that students didn’t need to miss a single day of school.
“They rescued our school. We are here to show them our gratitude,” Williams told students, who had created handmade cards and signs and delivered baskets filled with snacks to those who responded.
No one was in the school at the time of the fire, and there were no injuries to responding personnel. The incident was contained to the outside of the building, which is surrounded by single-family and multifamily residential properties just south of Edsall Road.
