Fire guts block at Questelles School 1 week before new term begins

The Ministry of Education was considering its options on Monday night after a fire destroyed the roof of a block of the Questelles Government School, one week before school reopens.

At the same time, the Fire Brigade said it was launching an investigation into the blaze that destroyed the section of the school that houses Grades 3 and 4, as well as the school’s kitchen, which provides meals for disadvantaged students.

Head of the Fire Department, Superintendent of Police Mark Ellis, did not offer any theories about the fire when he spoke to iWitness News at the scene around 7 p.m., about three hours after the building was engulfed in flames.

“What I observe at the moment, the entire roof collapsed and the back end of the building also. If you notice, the front of the building is a wall structure, but the back end was board. Seems as it was pine wood …” the chief firefighter said.

Meanwhile, Chief Education Officer Kay Martin Jack, speaking to the media separately at the scene, noted that the fire occurred one week before students return to the classroom after their Christmas break.

She said that the Ministry of Education was trying to determine how best to accommodate the students in the interim but had not had a full report as yet.

“So, basically, we would have to look to see how best we’ll be able to accommodate the groups, in terms of some of the classes where there may be smaller, we may need to split classes, and see how best we can work it out.

“It’s early times yet, as I said, we are sitting there now, we are having some discussions there to see, in the event, what can be done.”

Martin-Jack said the Ministry of Education was also trying to determine whether a watchman was on duty at the time of the fire.

In his interview, Ellis said that sometime around 4 p.m., the police operator received a call about a fire at the school.

“… the fire appliance promptly responded. But when they got here, the fire was already at the fully-developed stage, meaning that the whole building was already engulfed in fire,” Ellis explained.

Firefighters were able to prevent the fire from spreading to the main school block, although it took some time to extinguish the blaze.

“It took us a while because we had to basically empty the truck, and then we have to go close by at a hydrant to full up, and then come back, as you see,” Elis said.

Ellis said that eight firefighters responded to the blaze and other police units assisted with crowd control.

Commissioner of Police Enville Williams and Assistant Commissioner of Police Benzel Samuel were among the other senior police officers who also responded to the fire.

Ellis said that the fire department had not formulated any theories about the cause of the fire yet.

“We don’t know if something happened in the tuck shop or if it is something electrical,” he said, adding that the fire did not affect the tuck shop.

“There’s like a kitchen part on the building that is burned. There’s a small kitchen there, but it didn’t go over onto the other side.”

For yet another occasion, the fire put on display the poor state of the fire service in St. Vincent and the Grenadines as regards equipment.

One fire tender responded to the blaze. The truck has a 300-gallon water tank that it can pump onto a fire in 1 minute when the pump is operating at full capacity.

The firefighters appeared to be having some challenges fighting the blaze without a truck to elevate them, allowing them to spray water down onto the fire more directly.

However, Ellis said that elevation was not necessarily the issue.

“There’s a lot of galvanised (sheets), so when the roof collapsed, we had to basically manually move the galvanised (sheets) to get in between so that we can get to the fire. So that was really, really a challenge, but we are doing our best,” Ellis said.

A police bucket truck arrived at the scene around 7:30 and was used to elevate a firefighter who directed the firehouse in a more targeted manner.