Three days a rag­ing bush fire forced the evac­u­a­tion of over 900 pupils at the Princes Town No1 and No 2 Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry Schools, class­es had to be dis­missed ear­ly again on Mon­day.

Pres­i­dent of the PTA No­la Ramjohn-Karim said the fire dam­aged the school's wa­ter lines and a hy­dro­pon­ic sys­tem which was set up in the school com­pound.

Iron­i­cal­ly, it start­ed be­hind the school, around 11 am on Thurs­day, short­ly af­ter the T&T Fire Ser­vices com­plet­ed a safe­ty drill at the school, Ramjohn-Karim said.

"Chil­dren left their book­bags in­side the class­rooms and evac­u­at­ed. The school was closed on Fri­day be­cause there was a Pres­by­ter­ian Teach­ers Con­ven­tion and this morn­ing when they came to pre­pare the class­es, there was no wa­ter to clean," Ramjohn-Karim said.

She not­ed that a gal­va­nized WASA line be­came fur­ther dam­aged by the fire and even­tu­al­ly rup­tured.

"We called WASA and they said they will fix it. There is wa­ter in the 2,000-gal­lon tanks but the wa­ter has to pass through the lines us­ing a pump. Be­cause of the dam­age to the wa­ter lines, the wa­ter could not flow through the taps," Ramjohn-Karim said.

She called on the Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion to as­sist in clean­ing the bush near the school fence.

"If that area is cleaned, the fire would not have come up­on the fence. The fire did not come in­to the com­pound. It stayed on the grassy area to the west­ern side of the school. Some of the chil­dren were asth­mat­ic and could not take the smoke. The school had to be dis­missed ear­ly," Ramjohn-Karim said.

Chair­man of the Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Gowrie Roop­nar­ine said the cor­po­ra­tion has been as­sist­ing the school which cur­rent­ly ac­com­mo­dates both the Pres­by­ter­ian No 1 and Pres­by­ter­ian No 2 schools.

"I am sor­ry to hear about the fire but we will as­sist by pro­vid­ing a fire trace around the school to pre­vent any more bush­fires in the dry sea­son," Roop­nar­ine said.