Teachers, students narrowly escape as fire guts St George’s High School

Scores of teachers and students on Wednesday afternoon escaped injury after a fire engulfed and gutted the St George’s High School on North Road in Georgetown.
The wooden-and-concrete structure was destroyed by an out-of-control fire that was later brought under control by the Guyana Fire Service after some time had been spent in battling the fire.

According to the emergency services, when they arrived on the scene, they found the historic building fully ablaze.

A teacher of the school told Guyana Times that she was about to start a class with first formers when they were alerted by the cleaner that smoke was emanating from the Social Studies room. After the class had exited the building, the fire began spreading quickly, and soon engulfed the upper floor of the two-storey wooden building. As a result of the blaze, 421 students and their teachers are now displaced.
Education Minister Priya Manickchand has said the Ministry is currently looking for accommodation for the students and teachers.
“Any school that is destroyed by anything is an extremely big blow…this is a secondary school in the middle of Georgetown, it’s going to affect a large number of persons; it is extremely saddening to watch. We are seeing a better retention rate from the students coming in because of the various pathways…space is an issue in and around Georgetown, and this is quite heartbreaking,” she said.

One of the oldest schools
Meanwhile, Home Affairs Minister Robeson Benn, who was also on the scene, said the school that was destroyed was built in 1800, and is one of the oldest schools in the country, if it is not the oldest school in the country.
“It would be one of the oldest schools in the country in terms of the building. It would have been related to the St George’s Cathedral itself”, he said.
Meanwhile, Fire Chief Gregory Wickham has said an earlier call to the Fire Service could have saved the building. He said it was not until the building was fully enveloped by the inferno that the Fire Service was called to the scene.
“We got this call at 13:25h. Immediately after getting this call, five tenders were dispatched to the scene: two from the Central Fire Station, one from West Ruimveldt, one from Alberttown and one from Camp. As fire fighting continued, we added yet another truck, that is Water Carrier One that came all the way from Golden Grove to lend assistance to firefighting,” he explained.
“Immediately after getting the call, officers would have looked through the eastern windows of our building and lots of smoke and fire was seen in the air; so, we can tell that the fire started long before we received the call. However, when the firefighters got here, we did what we call a 360 and surrounded the fire scene, and thus we were able to bring it under control,” he continued.
“We wouldn’t say they had any much difficulty, except that we got the call late. If we would have gotten the call earlier, we would have been able to save this building, because the Fire Station is just a minute or 2 minutes away,” he explained.

Emotional
An onlooker who was at the scene, Judy Daff, told Guyana Times that she was brought beyond tears as she watched her childhood school go up in flames. “I am very sad about this, because this is the primary school I attended for years. This is a very good school, with good history. We had very good headmistresses, headmasters, and teachers… any competition we always got first… all of that was burned up in there. All of our certificates, trophies, and everything we did as children were burned up in there…I am hurt,” she confessed.
Meanwhile, another past student has said: “I am 64 years old, and I went to this school. You cannot imagine how painful it is to watch all my childhood memories go up in flames. I am on the Alumni Committee, and anything this school have I try to be a part of. Only Thursday, we were in there having a meeting, and now everything is gone”.
This is the third school to have been devoured by fire in the last year. In June last year, the teaching block which housed all the classrooms at the North Ruimveldt Multilateral Secondary School, located on Mandela Avenue, Georgetown, was completely destroyed by a massive fire. The school was burned shortly after a smart classroom which cost millions was commissioned there. This was the first smart classroom to have been commissioned in the country.
That fire had also left 512 students and 39 teachers displaced, while 65 students of that 512 were scheduled to write the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examination.
Even as that devastating fire struck the school just nine days before the 2021 examinations, the Ministry of Education put in place systems to ensure that the students had the opportunity to write the exams in the school’s auditorium.
This decision by the Ministry came after consultation with parents and students of the school, who requested that the examination be done in the auditorium.
Systems were also put in place to house the students of Grades Seven to 11 in several other sections of the school which were retrofitted by the Ministry.
One year later, the Education Ministry sent out bids for the reconstruction of several sections of the North Ruimveldt Multilateral School that was gutted by that massive fire.
The reconstruction of the school is expected to provide a more stable arrangement for the students of Grades Seven to 11, as well as boost the resources at the school, as the three laboratories that were destroyed in the fire are slated to be rebuilt. (LaWanda McAllister)