San Jose Fire Department Capt. Allison Cabral said Marco Horta Flores allegedly confessed to police and fire investigators after being pulled out of class and interviewed around 1 p.m. Tuesday.

According to Cabral, Flores said he set the fire near the vending machines outside the school's performing arts facility, the area where investigators initially believed the fire began after an electrical short.

"Everybody thought this was accidental based on the burn marks, the burn pattern, but he has confessed to setting the fire right next to the vending machine," Cabral said.

Cabral would not comment on how Flores allegedly set the fire, or whether accelerants were used.

School officials have estimated that the fire caused nearly $1 million in damage.

"It's very shocking and very sad for the community," Cabral said. "That performing arts center contributed so much to the community."

Pioneer High School is not the only Bay Area school to have suffered from fire damage recently. Over the last two months, fires—many of them suspicious—have affected Concord, Fairfield, San Leandro and Walnut Creek schools. On Nov. 22, a San Jose elementary school, Gardner Academy, sustained millions of dollars in damage after a four-alarm fire that investigators believe was deliberately set.

Flores "adamantly and categorically denied setting any other fires," Cabral said, adding that "he is very remorseful."

By Anne Ward Ernst

A fire that gutted the Pioneer High School performing arts building on Sunday night was originally thought to be caused by faulty wiring in an outdoor vending machine next to the building, fire investigators say.

And while the school's theater suffered interior damage, quick work and thinking by San Jose Fire Department firefighters and preventative measures taken by the school helped to keep the damage at a minimum.

The fire was first noticed at 8:44 Sunday night, and the first firefighters arrived at the scene three minutes later. Though never spreading beyond the performing arts building, the fire was quickly escalated to five alarms—a result of a policy that itself resulted from criticism surrounding response time to the Santana Row fire that occurred in August 2002.

Billowing smoke curled over the roof of the Performing Arts Center, obstructing the view of the building for neighbors living on the north side of Blossom Hill Road.

"You couldn't see the sky at first," said neighbor and Pioneer alumna Nancy Doize, who lives in the neighborhood across the street from the high school.

The fire at Pioneer was kept under control by an "aggressive attack," said Capt. Allison Cabral, public information officer for the San Jose Fire Department, by the 105 firefighters—who prevented the flames from spreading by drawing the flames upward by strategically cutting holes in the roof—and a sprinkler system installed on the theater's stage.

"The main frame of the structure is still intact," Cabral said, as a dozen or so firefighters stood atop the roof of the building Sunday night. "The sprinklers saved the stage."

The fire, which was "knocked down" within an hour of the first call, according to Cabral, charred the ceiling of the center, which doubles as a cafeteria, destroying the stage lighting and sound systems. Flames peeled away the fabric on chairs that were strewn about in front of the stage and stacked in rows at the back of the room, leaving behind soot-stained yellow foam cushions still attached to their silver-colored frames.

The blaze has been traced to a faulty electrical cord behind a vending machine located at the back side of the center that faces the school quad, said Jim Acker, San Jose Fire Department arson investigator, but he said they were unsure which machine the cord belonged to.

Fire marshals had inspected Pioneer within the last two months, Cabral said, but inspectors look for open, unobstructed exits and other fire-safety hazards and do not inspect every piece of electrical equipment.

Still, investigators are still trying to determine if there was any foul play involved and whether there is any connection between this fire and seven other fires that have occurred throughout the Bay Area over the past eight weeks, the most recent occurring the weekend before Thanksgiving at Gardner Elementary School in San Jose's Willow Glen area.

"I'm not aware of any graffiti," said Dave Loftus, San Jose field officer for the department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, referring to the tags found inside Gardner after the fire. "San Jose Fire Department is still sifting through all the indicators."

Students at Gardner were going back to their classrooms on Monday, Dec. 1, after flames destroyed the library, administrative offices, computer labs, faculty lounge and several classrooms.

Most classes at Pioneer were held as scheduled on Monday, Dec. 1, with only the band and drama classes having to be relocated.

The school's radio station, which is also housed in the building, was broadcasting via computer programming as flames were melting light fixtures inside the building and out. Firefighters pulled the plug on the radio equipment, which was saved by quick-thinking firefighters who threw blue tarps over the station's electronics to protect them from water damage.

Steve Dini, the school's drama teacher, praised them, saying because of their careful tactics, such as using the tarp and not drenching the room that houses the radio equipment, the station can hopefully be moved to another location on the campus. KMTG, the school's station, could be broadcasting once again in the near future, Dini said.

Dini plans to carry on with the drama department's production schedule as well, and says that many offers have come in from local schools and churches to house the school's holiday and spring shows.

The room next to the radio station was the drama department's costume shop, which housed hundreds of costumes collected over several years. The costumes were intact and are expected to only need cleaning, Dini said.

Money raised by the Glue Factory—a group of parents, teachers and staff who produce annual shows to raise money for the Pioneer drama department—had recently purchased the flame-retardant curtains for the stage. The curtains still hung from the ceiling, revealing only smudges of their original bright violet-blue from behind the soot. A sprinkler system installed over the stage is credited with largely preserving the stage and the props from the school's recent production of Mousetrap that closed Nov. 22.

In an uncanny twist of luck, Dini said Mousetrap was held earlier in the season than in previous years.

"In the last five years, the show has always been after Thanksgiving, during the first week of December," he said. "This is the first time we've held it earlier."

On either side of the performing center in the same building are the band and choir rooms, kitchen, and faculty lounge. Only water and smoke damage was discovered in each of those rooms, and officials expected to have full use of those rooms within one to three days.

Instruments left behind over the holiday weekend in the band room are expected to have little to no damage.

"The instruments are being taken out to be dried and deodorized," said Ken Roberts, band teacher.

The kitchen serves not only Pioneer students and staff, but also three other area schools—Alameda Elementary, Reed Elementary and John Muir.

At press time, Barbara Lepiane, principal of Pioneer, said she anticipated having the kitchen operable by midweek.

Clean-up crews were hard at work early Monday morning extracting water, soot, and pieces of the fallen, singed and soaked ceiling tiles.

It was too early for officials to estimate damage costs, but Karen Fuqua, district spokeswoman, said insurance was expected to cover all costs. Financial strains on the district are already being felt, she said, by the squeeze of the state's budget constraints, and the $100,000 deductibles for both the Gardner and Pioneer incidents will only pinch pocketbooks tighter.

"This is going to be a huge strain," Fuqua said. "There is a lot of manpower strain in addition to the budget strain."

San Jose Fire Department has been feeling its own strain recently, Cabral said, with the ongoing investigation at Gardner and now the investigation at Pioneer. In the wee hours of Monday morning, as firefighters were beginning to wind down and investigators were ramping up, another fire broke out in San Jose at 18th Street and Williams, across from a school in a townhouse complex.

"We're being spread thin," said Loftus, San Jose ATF field officer. "But we'll make it work."

While not considered thin, security at San Jose Unified Schools will be increased, officials said, in direct reaction to the two fires—one which occurred on a Saturday evening and the other on a Sunday evening.

"We're beefing up security, particularly over the weekends," Fuqua said. "The security will be pretty selective and intermittent at all sites. We will be using private security and outsourcing to San Jose Police Department at all our 45 schools. We will have roaming security and will concentrate on the secondary schools."