Five years after fire, computers at Tacky High still not replaced
Published:Sunday | March 31, 2019 | 12:00 AMCarl Gilchrist - Gleaner Writer
Five years after a fire destroyed a section of the Tacky High School in Gayle, St Mary, the school is still not back to the condition it was in before the blaze took place, according to principal Errol Bascoe.
“No, we’re not back at where we were, we’re getting there though, slowly but surely,” Bascoe responded when asked by The Sunday Gleaner.
“We are still short of a number of computers that were destroyed, we haven’t got those back yet so I would want to say that we are probably 70 per cent of where we were then,” he explained.
In the early hours of May 5, 2014, thieves broke into the school and set fire to the institution’s administrative block which housed the principal’s office, staffroom, records office, book room, bathroom and several other facilities, leaving losses valued at more than $45 million and forcing the displacement of students.
The fire damaged several vital pieces of equipment, including computers and even a surveillance system that was installed not long before that, along with appliances such as a stove and refrigerator, among other things.
While the damaged sections of the school were rebuilt, the principal was unable to say when and where computers will come from to replace the ones lost in the fire.
The donation of a state-of-the-art surveillance system by Moulton’s Surveillance and Security Services, in early March, replaced the system damaged in the fire, which was also a gift from that company.
On the brighter side, though, classroom space at the school is not a problem at this time, Bascoe said.
“What has happened since [is that] we have moved away the grade seven so we’re operating from two campuses now. The grade-seven students are not on the main campus, so that sort of alleviates the classroom space problem,” Bascoe explained.