Investigators are still determining the cause of a fire that swept through the administration building at Oak Crest Middle School in Encinitas on Oct. 29.

An initial insurance estimate sets the damage at $1.3 million, according to Eric Dill, San Dieguito Union High School District interim superintendent. It’s the second such fire in the administration building in 36 years, Oak Crest campus records show.

Encinitas Fire Marshal Anita Pupping said the Oct. 29 fire was reported at 3:41 a.m. Firefighters were able to contain the flames within an hour of arriving on the scene. Pupping added that no injuries were reported in the process of extinguishing the fire.

The San Diego County Sheriff’s Arson/Bomb Squad is leading the investigation, Pupping said. Oak Crest Principal Ben Taylor stated in an email that, as of Nov. 4, the cause of the fire is still unknown.

Sgt. Greg Hampton of the Arson/Bomb Squad released a statement regarding the investigation’s progress, in which he said, “We are not in a position to classify the fire at this time. The lab results will tell us if an accelerant was used or not. We are not looking for any suspects at this time and there have been no arrests.”

In his statement, Hampton also encouraged anyone with information on the fire to contact Crime Stoppers at 888-580-8477 or the Sheriff’s Communication Center at 858-565-5200.

Encinitas fire officials released the building, which housed offices belonging to the principal and counselors, back to the school district by Saturday afternoon. After an initial walkthrough, Taylor said, the damage was extensive: The entire building suffered damage in one way or another, either by fire, smoke or water.

“From what we can gather, everything is ruined,” he said. “The eastern side of the building is heavily damaged from fire and water; the mid part of the building is damaged from smoke, some water and foam that the fire department uses to cool materials; and then the western end of the building, where my office was, is heavily damaged from smoke.”

Taylor said the primary concern at the moment is salvaging files and paperwork from the offices. His staff members are working in portable work stations provided by a fire response company to dry, recopy, scan and digitize all salvageable files, but, he added, “We don’t know at this point what the extent of the loss is.”

Oak Crest had started moving toward digital files well before the recovery process spurred by the fire. Taylor explained that the district had already moved to Google Docs for “many, many of the internal things we do.” Fortunately, he stated, many of the students’ cumulative records — the files that follow each individual student from kindergarten through 12th grade, or in the case of San Dieguito Union High School District, grades seven through 12 — are recoverable.

“We receive hard copies (of the cumulative files) and we are reaching out to some of the elementary districts that feed into our school,” Taylor said. “If we need information on a specific kid and it’s not one of the files we were able to save, we would reach out to the elementary district.”

Dill stated the school’s insurance company has released an initial estimate of repairs, totaling $1.3 million, which would cover all costs of reconstruction as well as the installation of temporary offices.

All employees whose offices were housed in the building have already been moved to temporary workspaces elsewhere on campus. Dill said it will be early 2017 before “office-type trailers” will be installed at the school for more permanent work stations while construction is underway for the new administration building.

“The silver lining in all of this is that we had planned on doing a major remodel of the building in two years,” Dill added. “So now what we are going to do is just accelerate that project and use insurance money as much as possible for the reconstruction, and any (enhancements) that we would have done above and beyond what was there, our construction bond dollars will cover that difference.”

Several San Dieguito district schools are already undergoing extensive construction and renovations funded by the district’s Proposition AA bonds. According to Dill, none of these projects will be affected by the reconstruction now needed at Oak Crest.

The Oct. 29 fire is the second such incident to hit the building at the same location on campus, Oak Crest records show.

On March 23, 1980, electrical wiring sparked a fire that destroyed Oak Crest’s original administration building, which was built with the rest of the campus in 1957, according to the 1981 Oak Log yearbook. The replacement building, now also destroyed, opened in mid-1981.

Michele Leivas is a San Diego freelance writer. North Coast Current Editorial Director Roman S. Koenig contributed to this report.