Fire destroys Biscayne school

Last week it was small resorts. This week it appears that a rural school is the latest target of arson. Patrick Jones reports.

Dorla Wade, Principal, Biscayne Government School

“We’ll pick up the pieces and we’ll move on.”

Patrick Jones, Reporting

And that’s just what teachers at Biscayne Government School were doing this morning as one of two buildings on the school’s compound was destroyed by fire over the weekend.

According to Principal, Dorla Wade, she was at home on Saturday afternoon when she got a call informing her that the school was in flames. By the time she rushed to village, it was too late to save anything.

Dorla Wade

“We lost everything from one building, which includes kitchen utensils, food items, computers were destroyed, photocopier, refrigerator. Two classrooms were completely destroyed along with the school records.”

Those records include all the material for final exams, which were to have started today. But with the school year just a week away from ending, Wade says its too much work to prepare fresh exams.

Dorla Wade

“We are going to leave that just as it is because we have the term grade that we did two thirds of the course work. So we are going to leave that and we have an idea who will repeat from who will move on.”

Officials from the Ministry of Education were on the scene this morning knocking heads on just how to move on. General Manager of Government Primary Schools, Francis Baizar, says that with the basic necessities lost, teachers may be forced to end the school year earlier than planned. A preliminary assessment by an engineer brought in by the Ministry of Education is already telling school officials that the building is a total loss.

Francis Baizar, General Manager, Govt. Primary Schools

“We’ll do as best as we can to see if we can do something about the school here. Of course it seems as though we have to build over a whole new school, which cost something like about, I guess this school cost something like a hundred and eighty thousand dollars and there were other equipment in the school and furniture and so which cost additional money, which we cannot say at this moment.”

According to Operations Manager for the National Fire Service Michael Middleton, the call for assistance came into the Belize City office after one o’clock on Saturday afternoon, but the initial investigation is indicating that the fire had been burning long before that time.

Michael Middleton, Operations Officer, Natl. Fire Service

“Speaking to people that were passing the area, they said that they saw smoke from somewhere behind the building but they were not sure if it was the school building that was actually on fire.”

Patrick Jones

“At what stage did you all join the fight to out the fire?”

Michael Middleton

“Well the fire was already spreading throughout the entire building, and it was basically trying to catch unto the next one; that was when we got there.”

The building had just undergone retrofitting as it serves not only as a school but is the community’s hurricane shelter. Patrick Jones, for News 5.

School officials say the building housed two Infant One classes and the Standard One children, a total of thirty-two students. Also housed in the burnt building was a feeding centre and a computer lab that would have tied Biscayne Government School in with the ongoing Internet for Schools Project. Like all government buildings, the structure was not insured. Police suspect arson and have detained one suspect. Principal Wade would like to inform parents that there will be a P.T.A. meeting on Wednesday at two-thirty to discuss the situation.