About 500 students from an elementary school destroyed by fire will resume classes Thursday at five other schools, district officials said Monday.

Crestline Elementary School students will stay together with their current teachers and classmates, Evergreen Public Schools spokeswoman Carol Fenstermacher said Monday.

The school was destroyed by a three-alarm fire on Sunday. The Columbian reported (http://is.gd/XXxqaK) that the ruins were still smoldering. No cause has yet been determined.

District officials said a new school probably will not be ready until 2014.

There was no immediate dollar estimate of the loss, but Fenstermacher expected it would be in the millions.

The fire may have spread through the attic before it was noticed and reported early Sunday, said Fire Department Capt. Scott Willis. The 40-year-old building had sprinklers in the rooms, but not the attic.

Because the fire occurred in the early morning hours of a weekend when no one was present, it's being treated as suspicious, he said.

One firefighter was treated at a hospital for an undisclosed injury, said another fire department spokesman, Kevin Stromberg.

Investigators will interview witnesses and look into a report that someone was shooting off fireworks at the school on Saturday night.

Third-grade teacher Audrey Christina, who lives three houses from the school, heard the fireworks.

"Between 8 and 9, I'm sitting at my computer and heard what I thought were gunshots," she told The Columbian. "I walked to the end of my street and realized it was fireworks. I couldn't identify the kids; it looked like there were three or four. I just turned around and walked home."

Crestline had 498 students in kindergarten through fifth grade, and 50 staff members. It opened in 1973 in the Fircrest neighborhood.

About 70 percent of Crestline students receive free or reduced-price breakfast and lunch, Fenstermacher said.

Hundreds of Crestline students, parents and teachers cried and hugged Sunday as they watched from a sidewalk.

"It's really sad," said Michele Allen, 51. "I was here the first day the school opened. I was in the fifth grade, me and my brother, Michael Kunze. I had three kids who went to school here."

Rebecca Combs hugged her 10-year-old daughter, Chloe, a fifth-grader. Combs said her daughter is in her last year at the school and is on the school council and safety patrol.

"My daughter's kindergarten teacher was my brother's kindergarten teacher and my Girl Scout leader," Combs said. "I'm really sad and upset."

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Information from: The Columbian, http://www.columbian.com