Three hun­dred pupils, along with teach­ers and oth­er staff from the Princes Town RC Pri­ma­ry School had to be evac­u­at­ed yes­ter­day af­ter a fire broke out in the com­put­er room.

Princes Town fire­fight­ers re­spond­ed quick­ly and quelled the blaze but the com­put­er room in the base­ment and class­rooms on the first floor were dam­aged.

Al­though no one was in­jured, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion said the school will re­main closed to­day to al­low for “a thor­ough in­spec­tion, clean­ing, and sani­ti­sa­tion of the area.”

The cause of the fire, which oc­curred around 12.10 pm, is yet to be as­cer­tained.

The 300 pupils, the 16-mem­ber teach­ing staff and sev­en aux­il­iary staff were evac­u­at­ed to the near­by Ro­man Catholic church.

Par­ents were no­ti­fied and asked to pick up their chil­dren.

A crew from the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) dis­con­nect­ed the school’s elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply and the Com­mis­sion has launched its own in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Coun­cil­lor Latch­mi Nar­ine Ramd­han who vis­it­ed the school said arrange­ments were be­ing made to re­lo­cate the chil­dren, par­tic­u­lar­ly the pupils of Stan­dards Five and Four, to an­oth­er venue un­til the school is deemed safe.

“The fire ser­vices re­spond­ed quick­ly and they were able to con­tain the fire. Good thing be­cause it is a wood­en floor so the fire could have spread quick­ly. The school will be closed and the fire ser­vice is still con­duct­ing their in­ves­ti­ga­tions. They are try­ing to re­lo­cate the Stan­dard Four and Five stu­dents which are ap­prox­i­mate­ly 100 stu­dents,” he said.

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion ad­vised that the build­ing sus­tained struc­tur­al dam­age.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from the min­istry, Min­is­ter of State in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Lovell Fran­cis vis­it­ed the school and com­mend­ed the quick re­sponse by the school’s staff to en­sure that all stu­dents were safe and ac­count­ed for dur­ing the emer­gency.

The re­lease quot­ed the min­is­ter as say­ing, “I would like to thank the prin­ci­pal and staff for their pres­ence of mind and pro­fes­sion­al­ism, the stu­dents for their dis­ci­pline, the Po­lice Ser­vice for main­tain­ing or­der and the Fire Of­fi­cers head­ed by AD­FO Ar­joon for sav­ing our school with their quick ac­tion.”

The min­istry as­sured that all emer­gency re­sponse pro­to­cols were trig­gered and it will col­lab­o­rate with the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port to as­sess the struc­tur­al in­tegri­ty of the build­ing.

Princes Town po­lice of­fi­cers are al­so in­ves­ti­gat­ing.