Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

A swift re­sponse from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice (TTFS) af­ter a mid-morn­ing fire at the Aranguez North Sec­ondary School yes­ter­day re­sult­ed in the safe evac­u­a­tion of stu­dents, teach­ers, and vis­it­ing ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cials.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTFS, the re­port was re­ceived at 10.53 am, when staff ob­served smoke com­ing from the school’s IT Lab­o­ra­to­ry at its Bound­ary Road, San Juan, lo­ca­tion. A crew from the San Juan Fire Sta­tion ar­rived on the scene at 11.14 am.

Fire of­fi­cers found the blaze con­fined to an 8×8 me­tre room with­in the in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy lab­o­ra­to­ry on the ground floor and con­tained the flames be­fore they could spread to oth­er ar­eas.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors are now work­ing to de­ter­mine the cause of the fire. No in­juries were re­port­ed, and the ex­tent of equip­ment dam­age is still be­ing as­sessed.

TTUTA pres­i­dent Crys­tal Bevon-Ashe, who had been vis­it­ing schools in the St George’s Ed­u­ca­tion Dis­trict ear­li­er in the day, said na­tion­al of­fi­cers were on-site at Aranguez North when the alarm first went off.

“Ac­tu­al­ly, we were in the field to­day, vis­it­ing schools in the St George’s Ed­u­ca­tion Dis­trict,” he told Guardian Me­dia. “Some schools had been high­light­ed, and that was one of the schools. While my na­tion­al of­fi­cers were present, that’s when the alarm was sound­ed. Every­body ini­tial­ly thought it was a drill.”

Bevon-Ashe said the evac­u­a­tion was quick and or­der­ly.

“I must say every­body was able to make it out of the school. They wait­ed for the fire ser­vices to come, and no one was in­jured,” he said, adding that ear­ly in­for­ma­tion sug­gest­ed smoke had em­anat­ed from a room at the back of the com­pound.

Par­ents were anx­ious about whether class­es will re­sume to­day, but the TTUTA pres­i­dent said that the de­ci­sion de­pend­ed on the Fire Ser­vice’s as­sess­ment.

“I can’t say at this point in time,” he not­ed. “They would have to de­ter­mine how bad it is, and the fire ser­vices would have to tell them. I wasn’t able to get in con­tact with the prin­ci­pal… I on­ly got in­for­ma­tion from the of­fi­cer on site,” he said.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter, Dr Michael Dowlath, but calls went unan­swered.