Rad­hi­ca De Sil­va

Se­nior Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

A trail of a petro­chem­i­cal sub­stance has led fire of­fi­cials to sus­pect that a blaze which de­stroyed the ad­min­is­tra­tion block of St Pe­ter’s Pri­ma­ry School in Pointe-a-Pierre was de­lib­er­ate­ly set.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors are now prob­ing whether im­por­tant doc­u­ments were in­ten­tion­al­ly tar­get­ed.

Po­lice say the fire was first re­port­ed to the Pointe-a-Pierre Fire Sta­tion at 4.12 am. Crews from the Mon Re­pos sta­tion, led by Act­ing Fire Sub Of­fi­cer Mc­Cloud, re­spond­ed with­in six min­utes and were able to bring the flames un­der con­trol. De­spite their ef­forts, the ad­min­is­tra­tion block—a con­crete struc­ture ap­prox­i­mate­ly 65 feet by 36 feet, with wood­en floor­ing, rafters, and a gal­vanised roof—was com­plete­ly gut­ted. The build­ing housed the prin­ci­pal’s of­fice, ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fices, three class­rooms, and a store­room con­tain­ing stu­dent records, books, and elec­tron­ic equip­ment.

Po­lice said that dur­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, three class­rooms in an­oth­er build­ing on the east­ern side of the com­pound were found to have been bro­ken in­to. In­ves­ti­ga­tors dis­cov­ered a trail of tis­sue pa­per soaked with what they de­scribed as a strong petro­chem­i­cal scent, which height­ened sus­pi­cions of ar­son.

When Guardian Me­dia ar­rived at the scene around mid­day, the smell of the petro­chem­i­cals was still strong.

Speak­ing at the scene, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Ernesto Ke­sar con­firmed that the fire was con­fined to the ad­min­is­tra­tive build­ing but raised con­cerns about the ab­sence of se­cu­ri­ty on the com­pound.

“I would have asked im­me­di­ate­ly, where were the se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments? To be told that since 2018, there was not any fixed se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments. In the past, se­cu­ri­ty would not have been an is­sue here,” he ex­plained.

He praised the Fire Ser­vice for their swift re­sponse, not­ing that the au­thor­i­ties will work “as­sid­u­ous­ly” to en­sure the school is ready be­fore the new term be­gins.

Mean­while, school prin­ci­pal Geor­gette Med­ford said staff had se­cured the premis­es the day be­fore the fire but con­firmed the loss of crit­i­cal doc­u­ments and re­sources. “All our cu­mu­la­tive record cards are lost. All staff ap­praisals are lost. All staff files are lost. Lap­tops, desk­tops, tele­vi­sion sets, and re­frig­er­a­tors. But more so, the doc­u­ments that would have been lost,” she said. Med­ford added that she had made re­peat­ed re­quests for fenc­ing and a guard­ed se­cu­ri­ty booth, but none had ma­te­ri­alised.

Of­fi­cials from Guaracara Re­fin­ery, Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um and Paria Fu­el Trad­ing vis­it­ed the scene. Chair­man of Guaracara Re­fin­ery, Gow­tam Ma­haraj, said the com­pa­ny stood ready to pro­vide as­sis­tance.

“It feels as our own has been lost here through this fire. We stand ready and com­mit­ted to pro­vide sup­port to the staff and prin­ci­pal,” he said.

Her­itage board chair­man Kurt Ram­lal al­so said dis­cus­sions were un­der­way to put short-term mea­sures in place to get the school func­tion­ing again. He con­firmed that sam­ples have been tak­en and will be test­ed by the in­ves­ti­ga­tors.

“We’re go­ing to work to­geth­er to see how fast we can put the ad­min­is­tra­tion build­ing back, prob­a­bly a tem­po­rary build­ing, so that the prin­ci­pal and staff can get back on track to re­open the school,” Ram­lal said. He added that an of­fi­cial re­port from fire in­ves­ti­ga­tors is ex­pect­ed with­in 48 hours.