A vehicle caught fire in the parking area in front of De Soto Junior High School Thursday morning, Jan. 16. No one was injured, De Soto Fire Chief Tony Ochoa said.
He said firefighters were dispatched at 11:45 a.m. to the school, 731 Amvets Drive, after getting a call that a Kia SUV was on fire near the front of the school. When firefighters arrived, the Kia was fully engulfed in flames and the flames were melting the side of an SUV parked beside it.
“We knocked (the fire) out pretty quick,” Ochoa said, adding that the Jefferson R-7, Cedar Hill and Big River fire protection districts assisted.
He said firefighters broke a window on the other SUV to make sure no fire was inside it.
Ochoa said before firefighters arrived, school administrators tried to put out the blaze using fire extinguishers.
He said he believes part of the school was evacuated as a precaution, but he said the vehicle was far enough from the building that there was no risk of the fire spreading to it.
“We had to evacuate the north side of the junior high to a different location within the building,” said Nicole Spruell, the district’s director of communications. “The junior high was also put on a soft lockdown for a very short time so that students could not leave the building.”