My recent blog post...

[Little-Miss]

If anyone is interested in hearing about my horrendous week check out my blog post. heh...

 

http://www.edugeek.net/blogs/little-miss/752-day-i-wont-forget.html

[SYNACK]

That does sound like a very eventful week, everyone survived though so that is the main thing. Was it all 'Silent Hill' inside with ash? Edited April 29, 2011 by SYNACK

[ihaveaproblem]

Yikes scary stuff. Glad to hear everyone is ok. (And the servers after your heroic rescue attempt lol )

 

I presume this is the school. Fire looks big on the video

Harborne Primary School fire: Emergency meeting to take place today - West Midlands News - News - Birmingham Post

[john]

Yikes scary stuff. Glad to hear everyone is ok. (And the servers after your heroic rescue attempt lol )

 

I presume this is the school. Fire looks big on the video

Harborne Primary School fire: Emergency meeting to take place today - West Midlands News - News - Birmingham Post

 

Yup that's @Little-Miss 's school

[Andrew_C]

Ouch. Glad you are all safe!

 

A fire stop is where a wall (in this case) is carried up into the attic. Our pre-Victorian buildings are just the same; one long loft. Perfect for getting a good draught going.

Edited April 29, 2011 by Andrew_C

[Little-Miss]

Yup that's us.

 

Inside is uber creepy. Walking through inches of water, ash and bit of charred wood everywhere. When you look into the hall the lights are swinging from the ceiling in the breeze. Cant see the hall floor under the layers of tiles and water.

 

Whats REALLY wierd is that the infants and juniors used to be 2 seperate buildings and have been linked with a bit . So if you go up to the infants, shut the doors inbetween apart from the slight smell of smoke its like nothing has happened.

[john]

Be careful wandering around as its probably got asbestos floating around in the debris and you will be stiring it up a bit once it starts to dry out a bit, that becomes the next heap of fun!

[witch]

Goodness - sounds really scary - so glad you and everyone else are OK.

A shame though - I know the school as my parents lived at the Harborne end of Edgbaston for a while.

 

I might flag this up to my superiors as we are also a very old school (in parts) and perhaps we should look into the fire-stop issue.

[Little-Miss]

Definately would Witch. The fire just tore through the roof as there was nothing bloking its way.

 

Basically, if i understood it right, between each section of roof in the attic/void there should have been a brick wall floor to ceiling, but ours didnt reach the top. Fire officers said it was common for the age of the building and something they may be advising other schools about. EDIT: Just read Andrew_C's properly and he already explained lol!! Doh

 

@john yeah, that was mentioned to me. But as far as i am aware, the only asbestos in the school was in the basement which had been bricked up. But will keep that in mind.

Edited April 29, 2011 by Little-Miss

[elsiegee40]

I'm so glad everyone is OK Little-Miss... it could have been so much worse.

 

Like witch, I shall be commenting on this at school. Our Victorian building has lath and plaster walls and would go up in minutes In fact I shall email the H&S manager now while I think of it.

[Little-Miss]

Yeah, if our tradgey can stop others i'll be happy!

[Jamman960]

We had a small fire in our HE room before christmas, it was enough for the entire room to be covered in black soot and be written off by the insurance company(~40k to repair apparently).

 

I hope the school can recover quickly, it took a while to get the repairs underway here and we're only just re-opening the room this coming week

 

One thing I'd been meaning to mention on here is that the projector pole went through the ceiling into the loft above and hadn't been sealed in any way which allowed the smoke to escape the room and could have helped the fire to spread throughout the building. Any future installations here will be inspected and we'll be asking for poles to be sealed.