Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Stu­dents used fire­crack­er ex­plo­sives to set a fire at the Gas­par­il­lo Sec­ondary School yes­ter­day, trig­ger­ing pan­ic among stu­dents and staff. How­ev­er, quick work by safe­ty of­fi­cer Ham­let Dass­rath, teacher Martha De­ok­i­nath-Ma­haraj and Com­put­er Sci­ence teacher Nee­lasham Dip­nar­ine saved the school. Dip­nar­ine suf­fered su­per­fi­cial burns to his hands, while De­ok­i­nath-Ma­haraj sus­tained scorch­es to her feet when she kicked off her heels and be­gan run­ning to get wa­ter to ex­tin­guish the blaze. Po­lice said the fire start­ed around 8 am while stu­dents were await­ing the start of the morn­ing as­sem­bly.

It is al­leged stu­dents lit two fire­crack­ers and placed them on a gym­nas­tics mat­tress. The mat­tress erupt­ed in­to flames, send­ing clouds of black smoke in­to the au­di­to­ri­um where the stu­dents had gath­ered. One stu­dent, Mal­colm Bethel, said stu­dents start­ed to run out of the au­di­to­ri­um when they saw the smoke. "There was a lot of fire and the teach­ers went to ex­tin­guish it. We had to run out to the lawn," Bethel said. A Form Five pupil, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said there was on­ly one ex­it. "We were wor­ried be­cause we thought the en­tire school would burn down," the stu­dent said.

Dip­nar­ine told of­fi­cials he im­me­di­ate­ly ran to get a fire ex­tin­guish­er when he saw the gym­nas­tics mat­tress­es on fire. "The en­tire mat­tress was en­gulfed. I ran to the staff room but there was not one there, so I then ran to the ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fice and got the ex­tin­guish­er," he said. De­ok­i­nath-Ma­haraj, who was clad in eth­nic wear to com­mem­o­rate Di­vali, told of­fi­cials she hitched up her pants and ran to the wash­room to get wa­ter to ex­tin­guish the fire. By the time the fire of­fi­cers ar­rived the fire was put out. School prin­ci­pal Samuel Bowen de­clined com­ment. Of­fi­cers of the Gas­par­il­lo Po­lice Sta­tion vis­it­ed the scene and ques­tioned sev­er­al stu­dents.

A se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer at the school said some stu­dents were delin­quent and had no re­spect for au­thor­i­ty. He said the school had over 700 pupils but half of them pre­ferred to lime on the cor­ri­dors in­stead of go­ing to class­es. Min­is­ter in the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Clifton de Couteau and Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh both praised the teach­ers yes­ter­day for their quick re­sponse. Gopeesingh said: "I want to com­mend the teach­ers for sav­ing the school and sav­ing the State a sig­nif­i­cant amount of mon­ey." He said he planned to vis­it the school to ex­tend per­son­al thanks.