Firefighters swarmed Seven Hills School in Madisonville before dawn on Friday after smoke was reported pouring from the roof of a large school building, prompting a first-alarm response and forcing the cancellation of classes in the campus's lower school. The fire was reported at approximately 7 a.m. at the school's address, 5400 Red Bank Road, sending crews scrambling to contain flames that initial information indicated had started in the building's eaves before extending upward beneath roof-mounted solar panels.
According to WCPO 9 Cincinnati, the blaze was dispatched as a first-alarm fire, a designation that brought a substantial initial response to the Madisonville campus. The outlet reported that school officials announced classes for kindergarten through fifth grade in the Lotspeich building would be canceled for the day because of smoke damage, while WLWT reported that the cancellation applied to first- through fifth-grade students. The two accounts differ on the exact grade range affected, and Hoodline could not independently confirm which is accurate.
Dozens of Firefighters Respond Before Sunrise
WLWT reported that fire crews arrived around 6 a.m. and that dozens of personnel responded to the scene, a detail that underscores how quickly the response escalated at the Red Bank Road campus. The station's report also noted that officials said the fire spread across the building's roofline, and that the cause of the fire had yet to be determined as of Friday.
Seven Hills said the fire occurred specifically in the Lotspeich building, and all other grade levels were scheduled to attend class as normal Friday, per the same account from WLWT. Lotspeich faculty members were directed to report to the school's Hillsdale campus instead, according to WCPO.
Families Rerouted to Hillsdale Campus
Families whose children rode the Doherty shuttle Friday morning were told they could pick their students up at the Early School at the Hillsdale Campus, the station noted. WCPO reported that parents were separately asked to contact Kerryn Hinds for pickup arrangements. The Doherty Lotspeich Lower School at 5400 Red Bank Road serves kindergarten through fifth-grade students, according to The Cincinnati Enquirer.
The Enquirer's reporting also notes that Seven Hills is already in the process of building a new Doherty Lotspeich Lower School designed to consolidate kindergarten through fifth-grade students from two separate buildings into one, with that new facility scheduled to open in fall 2027. The existing Lotspeich school sits in an adjacent building that is eventually expected to be razed to make way for new green space once the consolidation is complete, per the same report.
Echoes of a Costlier Blaze in 1987
Friday's fire recalls a far more destructive incident at the Lotspeich School decades earlier. A July 1987 fire caused $3.5 million in damage and destroyed a 55-year-old wood-framed building on the campus, according to a historical account from WCPO. Fire officials at the time said lightning had struck the building's cupola dome and ignited the blaze, which took three hours to bring under control. No one was injured in that 1987 fire, which broke out on a summer night when only a handful of people were at the school.
As of Friday, the cause of this week's fire remained undetermined, and officials had not released further details on the scope of damage to the Lotspeich building or when affected classes might resume.
