Day after: where have all the teachers gone?

Of teachers.

When fire engulfed the school yesterday, they fled to safety, leaving the children to grapple with the disaster. The day after, it’s perhaps the burden of guilt, fear and helplessness—no one cared to take the teachers or the students through a fire drill—that has made them go underground. And the town has begun to point an accusing finger.

So it’s not a surprise to see a huge lock hanging outside the house (Door no. 77/94) of Antony Ammal on Motilal Street, 2 km away from the school. Antony Ammal is among the four teachers who fled to safety, leaving most of the children in the raging blaze at the thatched shed classroom on the second storey. ‘‘But she is not to be seen since yesterday afternoon,’’ says houseowner Janaki. Neither the police nor the neighbours have been able to find either Ammal or her two schoolgoing sons.

Neighbours say the children went to their grandmother’s at Fathima Nagar close to the Kumbakonam bus stand. But at the Fathima Nagar house, the children peep out and the grandmother says: ‘‘We don’t know Antony Ammal. We are trying to locate her,’’ says Kumbakonam Police Inspector Ramachandran.

It’s the same story with Class IV teacher, Sridevi, who lives 5 km away in Karuppur on the Kumbakonam-Chennai bypass road. Her house, too, is locked. Neighbours don’t know where she is.

But one of the four teachers, Mariam Angeline, who lives just a street away from the school, showed up at the police station today with a Bandaid near her nape. And claimed that she tried to save “many children.’’ She was teaching Class V students who were seated close to the wall facing the noon-meal centre where the blaze began. ‘‘I immediately asked the children to leave and while leading the students out, some of them fell on me and I suffered injuries in the back,’’ she says pointing to the Bandaid.

Angeline blames teachers on the groundfloor. ‘‘They fled without informing us.’’ In fact, most of the 23 teachers of the school are missing. While almost all teachers escaped unhurt (only one claims she suffered minor injuries), 90 children have died over the past 24 hours. At the hospital, almost the entire town congregated yesterday, but the conspicuous ‘‘absentees’’ were the teachers. They were neither by the bedside of the injured nor lending a shoulder to the bereaved parents.

‘‘They are not in their houses probably out of fear of being lynched by the public,’’ says District Collector J Radhakrishnan.

Local residents have already ransacked the front yard of the house of Palanisamy, the managing correspondent of the private-run but state-funded school, who was arrested last night. His daughter and the school principal, Santhalakshmi, along with her mother, Saraswathi, a managing partner of the school, have been arrested as also the noon meal centre cook, Vasanthi and the meal organiser, Vijayalakshmi. Now the PWD is checking whether the school had obtained the ‘‘stability certificate’’. One thing is sure: the school had no fire certificate. Meanwhile, the search for teachers and Vignesh continues.