The Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) is call­ing for ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty at the San Juan North Sec­ondary School, af­ter a fire broke out in a class­room on Wednes­day.

TTUTA pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin yes­ter­day ex­pressed con­cern about what could have hap­pened if the fire had oc­curred while class­es were in ses­sion. He said he hoped the min­istry would work with the T&T Fire Ser­vice to find out what caused the blaze in a cor­doned-off sec­tion of the school com­pound.

“There should be ways of mon­i­tor­ing parts of the school that do not have se­cu­ri­ty,” he said, not­ing the need for ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel to do prop­er and reg­u­lar se­cu­ri­ty checks through­out the com­pound.

Video footage of the af­ter­math of the fire, which oc­curred on Block C, showed dam­aged text­books and work­books scat­tered on the floor, along with a door that had been dis­lodged. At least six ceil­ing tiles were miss­ing and sev­er­al oth­ers were dam­aged by the fire.

Voic­es heard in the video were be­lieved to be school of­fi­cials as­sess­ing the dam­age.

“You see­ing where the fire run up they ... lit­er­al­ly see where that fire starts from down they and go up,” one per­son said.

An­oth­er added: “Miss, we have to thank God it didn’t spread fur­ther than this in any num­ber of ways.”

Con­tact­ed on the in­ci­dent, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said there were class­es as nor­mal yes­ter­day and an in­ves­ti­ga­tion to de­ter­mine the cause of the fire was un­der­way. She said the blaze was quick­ly con­tained and there were no in­juries.

Lum Kin al­so ap­pealed to the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry to ad­dress a sit­u­a­tion at the San Fer­nan­do Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary (Mod­sec) that was af­fect­ing the de­liv­ery of the school cur­ricu­lum.

“Teach­ers who would have planned their lab ses­sions have to now resched­ule them,” he said, adding that the school con­tin­ues to be high-per­form­ing but teach­ers are frus­trat­ed.

He al­so said at the Pe­nal West Sec­ondary, teach­ers have to deal with elec­tri­cal is­sues and flood­ing when­ev­er it rains.

“They had some work done on one of the blocks and on the mid­dle floor there is no elec­tric­i­ty in the class­room. They some­times get a foul stench when­ev­er it rains too,” he said.

Lum Kin said dur­ing a vis­it to the school by TTUTA, of­fi­cials said they no­ticed a piece of con­crete from the ceil­ing that fell on a cor­ri­dor dur­ing the va­ca­tion.

“We won­dered if it had fall­en on a stu­dent or a teacher what would hap­pen,” he said.