Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

A faulty fan is sus­pect­ed to have caused a fire that left more than $100,000 in dam­age at Sarah’s Prepara­to­ry School in La Ro­maine on Thurs­day night.

Res­i­dents of Sun­set Ridge spot­ted the blaze around 9 pm, con­tact­ed the fire ser­vice and used hoses in an ef­fort to con­tain the fire, which be­gan in the play­room on the ground floor of the build­ing.

Ear­li­er this year, res­i­dents raised ob­jec­tions to the school op­er­at­ing in their com­mu­ni­ty, com­plain­ing that it was caus­ing traf­fic con­ges­tion and ex­ces­sive noise.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the school yes­ter­day, there was ex­ten­sive dam­age to the low­er part of the build­ing.

Vi­nood Singh, who lives next door, re­called the fright­en­ing or­deal but praised the fire ser­vice’s re­sponse.

“I tried my best. I took my hose, wet­ting this side (his side) of the prop­er­ty. The wa­ter pres­sure was low, but we had to use tank wa­ter. But thank­ful­ly, the fire ser­vice re­spond­ed in about ten to 15 min­utes.

“I must ap­plaud them, they were ex­cel­lent in their job be­cause the fire was out of con­trol. It was re­al­ly hot. Thank­ful­ly, no one was in­jured, and no oth­er prop­er­ty was dam­aged.”

De­spite his ob­jec­tions to the school’s pres­ence in the neigh­bour­hood, he said the sit­u­a­tion was sad, par­tic­u­lar­ly for the par­ents and chil­dren.

De­spite the fire, own­er Sarah Mo­hammed con­tin­ued with the school’s cul­tur­al event in com­mem­o­ra­tion of In­di­an Ar­rival Day at the Bel Air Grounds yes­ter­day, as she did not want to dis­ap­point her stu­dents and par­ents.

Hop­ing to have the school re­opened in two weeks, she said the fire was the re­sult of a faulty elec­tri­cal fan, which they bought about three months ago.

“We have cam­eras, so we saw when the fire was just there, and then just ex­plod­ed,” she said.

Thank­ful for the over­whelm­ing as­sis­tance and sup­port from res­i­dents, par­ents and the Fire Ser­vice, she ad­mit­ted that the in­ci­dent took an emo­tion­al toll on her, as teach­ing was no longer just a job, but a pas­sion. She not­ed that her school had been op­er­at­ing for 31 years, orig­i­nal­ly in Point Fortin, be­fore re­lo­cat­ing to Sun­set Ridge af­ter the covid-19 pan­dem­ic. There are over 50 stu­dents en­rolled at the school.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the fire are be­ing led by of­fi­cers of the Mon Re­pos Fire Sta­tion and the San Fer­nan­do po­lice.