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Mangere East primary school principal Anthony Noble-Campbell stood at the gates of his fire-damaged school today and tried to explain to five and six-year-old pupils the hurt he felt after a suspected arsonist struck during the weekend.
"This is a school that was safe for everybody to come into and there is a sense of violation that someone has come in and destroyed something that was precious to us," said the principal of the 600-pupil Mangere East School as he turned away students and their parents who were not aware that the fire had shut the school for a week.
The alarm was raised about 4.30pm yesterday and about 80 firefighters and 16 fire appliances fought the blaze which had been started in two places about 50 metres apart on either side of the school.
Firefighters transmitted a second alarm as they raced to the school when they spotted smoke and flames.
Noble-Campbell said the school played a large part in bringing the community together and that sense of it being a safe place for people to go had been attacked by the arson.
Two of the damaged rooms were part of the Samoan bilingual unit which Noble-Campbell said was another treasure at the school.
He said one of the next steps was to have a plan for the young students when they returned.
"We need to work with them to help them back into the school, to know the school is still a safe place to come to and that is what we'll be doing in the next couple of days."
He said the school would be shut this week while they tried to work out how many buildings needed to be demolished, where children and teachers would be accommodated, and a host of other issues.
The school operated open plan classrooms where two teachers shared one room. Seven teachers and their classes now needed new rooms.
He said the issue of sprinklers at the school was an issue for the Ministry of Education and not for him to comment on. The Fire Service said had sprinklers been installed the fire damage would have been contained.
Fire safety officer Russell Dickson said it was disappointing sprinklers were not installed but many more school buildings were now protected than a few a years ago.
"Sprinklers would have dealt with the fire very quickly."
The fire was one of two arson attacks on schools during the holiday weekend.
Kerikeri High School was also likely to be closed for much of this week after arsonists torched up to four classrooms early yesterday morning.
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