Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Class­es re­main sus­pend­ed at St Bene­dict’s Col­lege in La Ro­maine fol­low­ing last Wednes­day’s fire that forced the evac­u­a­tion of stu­dents and staff. The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion had in­di­cat­ed last week that class­es would have re­sumed yes­ter­day sub­ject to clear­ance from Fire Ser­vice and OS­HA.

Con­tact­ed for an up­date yes­ter­day, the Min­istry ad­vised that it was still await­ing the of­fi­cial re­port from the T&T Fire Ser­vice, and once re­ceived, it would re­view its find­ings and rec­om­men­da­tions to de­ter­mine he nec­es­sary ac­tions to be tak­en.

Pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tions by fire of­fi­cials had sug­gest­ed that the fire may not have been but ac­ci­den­tal.

The blaze broke out around 12.20 pm in the school’s au­di­to­ri­um, de­stroy­ing the store and dra­ma room. Teach­ers used the pub­lic ad­dress sys­tem to in­struct all stu­dents to pro­ceed to the des­ig­nat­ed muster point at St Bene­dict’s RC Church, and all 525 stu­dents and 45 staff mem­bers were evac­u­at­ed.

In a re­lease last Thurs­day, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath stat­ed that fol­low­ing the fire, all nec­es­sary mea­sures were tak­en to en­sure that stu­dents were safe­ly evac­u­at­ed, and that they were work­ing close­ly with the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to re­store nor­mal op­er­a­tions.

The min­istry’s in­di­cat­ed then that the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion would have fa­cil­i­tat­ed a coun­sel­ing ses­sion for all staff mem­bers last Fri­day, and stu­dents up­on re­sump­tion of class­es.

The min­istry re­it­er­at­ed that the safe­ty and well­be­ing of all stu­dents and staff re­mained its high­est pri­or­i­ty.