Urgent meeting called after fire guts Canaan Presbyterian classrooms

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

Hours af­ter a fire razed a class­room block, dis­plac­ing pupils of Canaan Pres­by­ter­ian School, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath said an ur­gent meet­ing had been con­vened to dis­cuss the way for­ward.

Dowlath said the meet­ing, sched­uled for to­day, would bring to­geth­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives of School Su­per­vi­sion, the Ed­u­ca­tion Fa­cil­i­ties Plan­ning and Projects Di­vi­sion (EF­P­PD), the Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry Schools' Board of Ed­u­ca­tion, the school's prin­ci­pal and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC).

“In­for­ma­tion will be shared about the way for­ward,” Dowlath said.

Eight class­rooms at Canaan Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry School were gut­ted in the fire. The af­fect­ed class­rooms were used by First Year, Sec­ond Year and Stan­dard One pupils.

Par­ent Dele­cion Williams said he was pass­ing the school short­ly af­ter 4 pm when he saw the blaze.

Williams said he con­tact­ed the prin­ci­pal and sev­er­al teach­ers af­ter wit­ness­ing the fire.

Fire­fight­ers ar­rived prompt­ly. Williams de­scribed the blaze as in­tense and said fire­fight­ers had dif­fi­cul­ty ex­tin­guish­ing it as the flames con­tin­ued to flare up.

“At that time the blaze was a lit­tle high. It had a good blaze at that time,” Williams said.

He said fire­fight­ers con­tin­ued work­ing to ex­tin­guish the fire, but the flames kept re­turn­ing be­fore they were even­tu­al­ly brought un­der con­trol.

Williams es­ti­mat­ed that be­tween sev­en and eight class­rooms had been af­fect­ed, in­clud­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly three First Year class­es, three Sec­ond Year class­es and a Stan­dard One class.

The cause of the fire has not yet been de­ter­mined; the ex­tent of the dam­age is still be­ing as­sessed.

In a re­lease is­sued on this morn­ing, the Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry Schools' Board of Ed­u­ca­tion con­firmed that the school would be closed for the day fol­low­ing the fire.

The board said the fire had been con­tained fol­low­ing the re­sponse of emer­gency ser­vices and that in­ves­ti­ga­tions were on­go­ing to de­ter­mine its cause and as­sess the dam­age.

It urged mem­bers of the school com­mu­ni­ty and the pub­lic to re­main off the com­pound to al­low emer­gency per­son­nel and in­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cers to car­ry out their du­ties safe­ly.

“The safe­ty and well-be­ing of stu­dents, teach­ers and sup­port staff re­main cen­tral to de­ci­sions re­gard­ing the re­sump­tion of class­es,” the board said.

Par­ents and guardians were asked to li­aise with their chil­dren's class teach­ers for fur­ther in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing school op­er­a­tions.

The board thanked the emer­gency ser­vices for their re­sponse and the school com­mu­ni­ty for its co­op­er­a­tion and un­der­stand­ing.