Maddie Laney extinguishes the fire in her three story house.
Photo by Kurt Hildebrand.
Douglas High School Forensics student Maddie Laney had an interesting problem.
The house she and her team made out of popsicle sticks wouldn’t catch fire.
The Gardnerville junior and her team, consisting of Zoe Brugger, Riley Danen, Ivy Givens, Emery Soule and Sequoia Ellision, designed the house after those famous for pancaking in the Loma Prieta earthquake because their bottom stories were garages.
They even included a car in the garage as a potential source of the fire.
But it took four tries for fire investigator Terry Taylor using a torch and some accelerant to get the model house to burn.
The project wasn’t that different from the investigations class Taylor teaches to actual firefighters in the summer.
Students examine the damage to a scene and determine things like where the fire started and what could have started it.
Taylor said the reason the three-story house wouldn’t burn was a lack of draw starved it of oxygen.
Douglas High School science teacher Kimberly Tretton’s forensics students brought the mock houses back into the classroom to determine what might have caused the fire.
Tretton said this was the second year the students have been able to actually burn the houses they built. She has been conducting a mock homicide as part of the forensics class for the past 17 years.
Students also got to meet the Nevada Fire Marshal’s new K-9 investigator on Dec. 19.
“The arson dog was so amazing,” she said. “We hid accelerant around the classroom, and he found it.”
Tretton teaches four classes with a total of more than 100 students.
The mock homicide class is scheduled for the first week of January after students return from Christmas break.
