Millions of gallons of water were used to fight the fire that ultimately brought Roosevelt Education Center to the ground — and it had to go somewhere.

Water streamed out of multiple doors of the historic school in mid-June as firefighters sprayed down the building for hours — during a downpour, no less. Some of that water was absorbed, but the ground was saturated that day, and it's likely much of it flowed into storm drains guiding the overflow into area rivers.

Fire departments can set up a system of dikes to control runoff, but that's often not their primary objective. So unless it is a situation with a known hazardous material, the department will focus its resources on fighting the fire at hand.

In the case of Roosevelt, with multiple fire departments responding for the hourslong fight, runoff was inevitable.

"With the amount of water we were forced to use, I don't know if we could contain that amount of runoff," St. Cloud Fire Chief Bill Mund said. "It was just too much."

"In this case, we didn't have the time or personnel to do that," he said.

River's role

When the fire department anticipates using an large volume of water, department leaders will put the local utilities on alert to let them know what to expect. Then the storm water can be monitored for irregularities.

"It was basically just runoff water with some ash," Mund said.

"We weren't aware of any hazardous materials."

Minnesota Pollution Control Agency spokesman Steve Mikkelson said the agency's stormwater program focuses more on runoff at construction sites.

"In general, if there's going to be a lot of activity, if more than an acre of land is being disturbed or affected, that's when (the Pollution Control Agency) kicks in, and they'd need to have perimeter controls like silt fencing," Mikkelson said.

Many construction sites install fabric fencing around the exterior of their site to prevent runoff of sand and silt. Often catch basins in those areas will also be blocked or filtered.

Mund said there was no known sheen on the Mississippi River, which can point to pollution, after the Roosevelt fire. That's something the fire department would have been called to help clean up, he said.

"It doesn't take much, especially petroleum products, to make a large slick on the river," Mund said.

He said those spills can be traced back to a neighborhood through corresponding catch basins and the river outlets.

The fire department's response at Roosevelt, and the rain, had the same effect as a wet demolition, which makes hazardous material such as asbestos less likely to go airborne. But it wasn't a wet demolition by design.

"We were still actively trying to put the fire out," Mund said.

"When we were involved in the demolition, we were trying to open the building up to access areas of the building that still had hidden fire," he said.

The storied school's basement was filled with crushed rubble and water after the demolition was complete. Water that sat in that space likely drained out through the appropriately named "sand pit" — the part of the basement with a sand floor.

"We don't typically on structure fires do much with runoff," Mund said. "Unless we are aware of very significant problems on that site."

Follow Marta Jewson on Twitter @martajewson.

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