So says a Virginia science teacher who owns a python that was found outside its enclosure in a middle school classroom that caught fire recently. Authorities, meanwhile, have publicly blamed the fire on the snake, named Nanner, alleging the python knocked over a heat fixture in her owner’s classroom, igniting a blaze that caused damage at Bedford county’s Forest middle school and killed a tortoise there. But Nanner’s caretaker has vociferously come to her defense, with the educator arguing the python only got out trying to desperately escape a blaze that was not of the creature’s making.
The unusual controversy erupted after Forest middle’s fire alarm and sprinkler system was triggered at about 12.30am on 13 August. Local firefighters said they arrived to find the blaze had started in a second-floor classroom – where, after entering, they encountered an 8ft (2.4m) python on the loose amid flames and smoke. Crews “secured the python into a temporary holding area” while they extinguished the blaze, which officials said resulted in damage from fire or water to several classrooms – and claimed the life of a tortoise.
Furthermore, the county’s chief fire marshal, Steven Whipple, declared to WZBJ that “the snake contributed to starting the fire” by knocking over a heat fixture. All of that ultimately prompted a woman identifying herself as the life science teacher who put Nanner in the classroom at the center of the case to weigh in with a lengthy social media post disputing the creature was responsible for sparking the blaze. Brittany Jacobs wrote that “all light fixtures were secured to the appropriate places” in her classroom, where throughout her 18-year teaching career she has kept enclosed animals such as snakes, frogs, turtles, tortoises and hatched chicks for educational purposes.
The heat fixture next to the tortoise who perished was “clamped” to the side of its enclosure and placed high above the animal’s bedding “to not cause a fire due to overheating”, Jacobs wrote on 15 August. The entire heat fixture where the fire started was completely gone, including its metal casing and socket, Jacobs said. All that was left was the fixture’s heat emitter.
Whatever might have ignited the fire in that fixture, Jacobs said, the blaze evidently burned so hot that the metal on Nanner’s tank “had been stretched”. And, to Jacobs, it seemed Nanner then “pushed on the [enclosure] screen so hard to get out that she bent the metal locks”. Additionally, video from school hallway surveillance cameras established that the fire was visible through glass on Jacobs’ classroom door for 20 minutes before Nanner was then seen exiting.
Jacobs asserted that Nanner instinctually would have slithered toward the doorway because that was where the classroom was coolest during the fire. Jacobs lastly maintained that firefighters first confronted Nanner outside her classroom doorway. She said they then used a water hose to blast Nanner from outside the doorway back into a corner of the room, where the python was positioned in a video that firefighters recorded and published on social media.
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