TOKYO - The head of a Tokyo public elementary school that was severely damaged in a fire last month said Thursday that a teacher had placed her own electric heater and air circulator in the storage room where the fire is thought to have originated.
The teacher had routinely dried items there after using the washing machine in the home economics room, and was drying articles of her own clothing at the time of the fire, Principal Masahiro Takakusaki said.
The fire broke out in the fourth-floor storage room of Takinogawa Daisan Elementary School on June 19. At the time, the teacher and 24 fifth-graders of the municipally run school in Tokyo's Kita Ward were in the adjacent music room.
To escape the fire, the teacher and students climbed through the windows and onto a narrow ledge only 76 centimeters wide. Among the eleven people who were injured, one pupil and the teacher sustained broken bones after falling to the rooftop of a lower-level floor.
The police said fiber fragments were found on the heater and that power was being supplied to the device at the time of the fire.
The teacher, who is in her 40s, has told police that she was drying laundry using the air circulator. The police are looking into the case as an accidental fire.
Takakusaki said it was "improper to keep or wash private belongings" in the workplace.
The building was damaged so extensively that the municipal government is arranging for pupils from third grade up to attend other schools in the area beginning early this month.
If the building is ultimately torn down, it would take about five years to rebuild it, according to the municipal government.
