Kitchen fire swallows 86 schoolkids

Sending a chilling message on the state of school infrastructure and the absence of any regulatory apparatus, 86 children were killed in a b...

Sending a chilling message on the state of school infrastructure and the absence of any regulatory apparatus, 86 children were killed in a blaze after they were trapped in their classrooms in the Sri Krishna Girls High School in this Thanjavur town.

Until late tonight, the charred bodies lay piled up at the local hospital—40 girls and 46 boys dead, seven of them still unidentified. Twenty seven others had severe burns—15 of them ‘‘critical.’’

The Kumbakonam school is a textbook example of what a school should not be. Funded by the Tamil Nadu government, the school flouted all safety rules. Confirming that it didn’t possess the mandatory fire licence, district fire officer M Ayyasamy said: ‘‘It’s a building unfit for running a school.’’ Yet district Education authorities granted them the licence to function.

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This is the school: a one-foot-wide iron gate is the only exit from the dingy two-storeyed building. All 900 students, from Class I to X, have to exit through this tiny gate.

The classrooms: some 200 children are crammed in each of the two 60 X 20 feet classrooms on each floor. A concrete wall separates the classrooms with an iron gate at the right rear. Despite a thatched shed for a classroom on the second floor, no fire extinguisher was kept in the building.

Worse, a noon meal centre — a kitchen with thatched roof — was just 20 feet away from the shed on the second floor. Only two days ago, the thatched roof of the school’s kitchen was replaced. When the noon meal ayah came in around 10.30 am — the fire started around 11 am — she used the old, discarded thatched material to light the cooking fire. As the fire spread, she fled the place. Close to the kitchen, the thatched classroom on the second floor, too, caught fire. The children couldn’t escape as the iron gate was at the right rear which the fire had already engulfed. The thatched shed soon crashed, trapping the 192 children inside.

Fire tenders arrived within two minutes after a call from a local resident. Firemen broke open the concrete wall separating the classrooms and entered the building. ‘‘If there was a left rear exit, almost all children would have escaped. We could save only 100 children,’’ said Fire Officer K Kumar.

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CM J Jayalalithaa ordered immediate closure of the school and suspended the assistant education officer, district elementary education officer and the chief education officer. She told reporters that action would be taken against the school management for negligence.