When we got back in after half term on Monday we could smell this 'fishy' smell but after going round everywhere we couldn't locate it. Decided to bring in the caretaker from the primary school, he went up in the loft etc., also did a check around, didn't find anything.
Over the next day or so it either completey went away or came back. Then yesterday it was stronger than ever, then at lunch time it changed from 'fishy' to 'smouldering'. I decided to send the children (18 of them) out with 4 members of staff on a nature walk, sending the register with them whilst I kept the registration file. Told them that someone would come over to them (they were going round the school field) if we needed to do anything else.
My other member of staff (we had staff in covering for a SENCO meeting that was supposed to happen at 2pm) rang the local fire station, they said they could only come out if we phoned 999, but we were warned that if they found nothing there could be a charge. Then thinking we were over reacting, I decided to phone my cousin who is an electrician (just made redundant and in the process of starting up his own business) he agreed to come straight away to check things out for us (we were convinced it was something to do with the boiler). Whilst he was on his way, I opened every single bag in the foyer and checked for smells - nothing. My cousin arrives and we go through everything with him, he opens the fuse box and oh were we SO lucky. Three or four of the sockets were burnt out, he said we would have gone up in smoke that evening if not before!!
Got a message to staff on the field to take the children to the school hall and we started the process of getting in touch with parents to pick their children up, most were picked up within the half hour but one parent decided to finish her shopping and came half an hour before normal pick up - can you say I was fuming!
Once all the children were gone and my cousin had sorted the problem the staff went back into pre-school and he showed us the damage, it was then that it hit us and we realised how lucky we had all been.
Not a day I'd want to repeat but our team work was second to none, I bought flowers for all the staff involved.