EDISON — A fire at a township school is the second one in the district in the span of four days, and appears to have been ignited in the same way as the first, according to authorities.
A school staff member quickly extinguished the July 21 fire at Lindeneau Elementary School around 10:06 a.m., after being alerted by a student and smelling smoke.
Like the July 17 fire at Washington Elementary School, the flames erupted in a boys’ lavatory at the Blossom Street school. Also mirroring the other fire, paper products, including toilet paper rolls, were used to ignite the fire, police said.
As a precaution, students in a summer program at the school — the same 120 children in grades one through four that were attending summer literacy classes at Washington Elementary on the day of that fire — were evacuated, according to school officials.
Township firefighters responded to Lindeneau Elementary to assess the damage and to ensure that the fire had been completely extinguished.
The Lindeneau school, like Washington Elementary, is equipped with smoke detectors and alarms, but the fire did not burn long enough to activate them, school officials said.
Detectives from the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office and the township Police Department are investigating the fires, both of which they’ve deemed suspicious.
A third fire in the district, in March 2014, destroyed James Monroe Elementary School. A janitor at the school admitted to discarding the cigarette that caused the blaze.