Vandalism, Fire At Oceana High School

Apr. 24 - BCN -- Vandals spray painted racist graffiti, lit fire to a storage closet and prompted a bomb scare overnight at Pacifica's Oceana High School, a school district official said this morning.

Pacifica police and North County Fire personnel responded to the school at 12:27 a.m. after a fire alarm began to ring, according to police. The fire was located in a storage closet in a weight room and extinguished.

Officers also found fresh graffiti on the exterior walls near the gym.

"It was a lot of racial slurs - comments about every group you can think of," said Mike Crilly, superintendent of Jefferson Union High School District. The graffiti included the phrase "white power," swastikas and slurs against black, Chinese and Filipino people, Crilly said.

"There was also a reference to a bomb, so we had a sheriff's bomb squad bring their dogs and check the entire school. In this day and age, you have to take it all seriously," Crilly said.

Authorities determined the school, located at 401 Paloma Ave., was safe long before students began showing up for classes. Automatic calls to students' homes informed parents of the incident.

The fire was isolated to a storage closet, but smoke and water damaged the school's weight room as well, Crilly said.

"All the walls are blackened and the room is out of commission at this point," he said.

The girls' locker room, which shares a ventilation system with the weight room, has also been closed due to smoke damage.

"We're going to start cleaning it up so we can get it back into shape," Crilly said of the two buildings. "It's more nuisance than real dollar damage, though clearly it's going to cost some money to get it repainted and cleaned up and replace the small items that were destroyed. The bigger concern is it puts it out of commission for the students for a while and that's not fair to the kids."

Crilly said that in the early 70s, Oceana High School's library was intentionally set afire, but there haven't been any major incidents since. The school hasn't had problems with racial tensions, he said.

"Graffiti pops up occasionally, but nothing to this extent. Over the years we've caught kids who have done it and we'll prosecute them," he said.

The Silent Witness program is offering a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of whoever is responsible for the crime. Anyone with information about the incident is asked to call the Pacifica Police Department at (650) 738-7314 or the Silent Witness at (650) 259-4444.

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