Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to yes­ter­day’s fire at St Bene­dict’s Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do, which forced stu­dents and teach­ers to evac­u­ate, sug­gest it may not have been ac­ci­den­tal, a se­nior fire of­fi­cer has said.

For­tu­nate­ly, no one was in­jured, and all stu­dents and staff were ac­count­ed for. The fire broke out around 12.20 pm in the store/dra­ma room of the au­di­to­ri­um build­ing at the back of the com­pound, an al­so dam­aged a wood­en stage. A stu­dent alert­ed a teacher, and every­one was evac­u­at­ed to near­by St Bene­dict’s RC Church in La Ro­maine.

As­sis­tant Chief Fire Of­fi­cer (South) Mukhar­ji Ram­per­sad told re­porters the Mon Re­pos Di­vi­sion­al Fire Head­quar­ters re­ceived the call at 12.25 pm and quick­ly ex­tin­guished the blaze, which was con­fined to the store and dra­ma room. He con­firmed there was no su­per­struc­ture dam­age.

On whether the fire was de­lib­er­ate, he said, “I’m say­ing the pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tion is trend­ing to­wards non-ac­ci­den­tal, not ac­ci­den­tal. That’s the ter­mi­nol­o­gy I pre­fer to use pend­ing a fur­ther and more thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion to come to a cause de­ter­mi­na­tion.”

Ram­per­sad al­so urged the pub­lic to in­stall fire de­tec­tion and sup­pres­sion sys­tems, have elec­tri­cal test­ing every five years, and avoid us­ing de­fec­tive ap­pli­ances. With bush fire sea­son start­ing De­cem­ber 1, he al­so ad­vised home­own­ers to clear fire traces around their homes, re­move clut­ter, and to in­vest in a mul­ti­pur­pose fire ex­tin­guish­er.

Fa­ther David Khan, chair­man of the Catholic Ed­u­ca­tion Board of Man­age­ment, praised the fire ser­vice, say­ing ap­pli­ances ar­rived about 15 min­utes af­ter be­ing con­tact­ed. He com­mend­ed the school for fol­low­ing prop­er emer­gency pro­to­col, not­ing that all stu­dents and staff were safe.

He ex­pressed con­cern that some stu­dents ran to­wards the flames, record­ing the scene on their phones. While some par­ents ques­tioned the tim­ing of alerts, Khan said the top pri­or­i­ty was en­sur­ing every­one’s evac­u­a­tion.

The school will re­main closed to­day for air qual­i­ty tests, with class­es like­ly re­sum­ing on Fri­day. San Fer­nan­do po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing.