On Tuesday at 1:20pm a huge fire broke out in the attic of our school. It took 4+ hours to get under control and out due to how our old Victorian building roof was constructed. We have a hall with 3 classrooms coming off each side. The fire wiped out 3 classrooms underneath the attic where the fire started, and destroyed the roof in the hall ending up with most of it collapsing. The rest of the juniors is completely water logged.

I'm still have flashbacks of the day. Half an hour before i had just replaced a projector lamp in one of the destroyed classrooms (tut!) and had gone with my collegue (Premises Manager) to fix a blind (We help each other). The fire bell went and i looked at a group of teachers in the classroom and said "i'm a fire marshall and i havent heard of any drill".

So we all filtered out on to the playground. Now this is this image that has stuck with me....the plumes of smoke pouring out of the gable ends and kids being moved into the infant playground.

We went into Marshall mode running in to check where we could without going across the hall. Came out again at the front of the school and ran round to open gates and check other areas we could get too, made sure fire brigade were coming. when we got back to the junior playground there was so much smoke. This was only 5 minutes or so since we'd ran round the school. It was so thick and acrid we had to move the kids completely off site to a bingo hall up the road.

We stood in the corner of the junior playground as the FIRST fire engine turned up, helping the guys. This is when it started to hit us that this was a major event.

The smoke eventually got too thick for us to stand there and we moved up to the infant playground.....

The rest is a bit of a blur. At one point i ran in to save the servers with a fireman (lol!) The rest of the time was just stood on the side of the road watching our beloved building go up in flames.

We had at least 15 fire engines by the end of it. We were looking on the sides of the vehicle to see where it had come from, every corner of Birmingham! They were fantastic, kept us informed every step of the way.

When the fire was eventually out (as in flames anyway). I was allowed back upstairs to my desk, which is completely untouched thankfully to grab my stuff.

There was so much water! About 4 inches of water to wade through, and that's the entire junior side.

The next day was the hardest. Very eerie. Went in as far as we could. Wasnt a pretty sight. Lots of half eaten sandwiches, very Mary Celeste.

Turns out to have been a faulty light socket or something in the attic. Just cant get over the speed at which it went up. It seems we didnt have any proper walls (fire stops!?) between the different sections of roof. So the fire had free reign. Apparently this is common in our age of school (100ish years old) so we are now unfortunately an example for other schools.

Everyone was safe. 640 kids plus 90 odd staff all out and safe and for that i am very grateful but i still cant help being down about whats happened. Sorry Will and Kate, i just wasnt in the mood for your big day. I'm sure i can catch it again!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-13212758