On the night that a section of the 135-year-old elite girls school Westwood High burned, the swift action of the building superintendent John Taylor is being considered heroic and might have made the damage much less than it could have been. “If it wasn’t for John Taylor mi nuh know what woulda happen,” said a worker at Westwood as he used a fire hose early Tuesday morning to douse embers.
The fact that fire drills had also been a regular feature of the institution also ensured quick, safe evacuation of girls who were housed, upstairs near to the section of the building that burned.
When the fire started last week Monday night around 10 o’clock one of the first responders to get there was John Taylor. He said he saw fire in the serving area of the kitchen and then noticed it on electrical wires. He swung into action immediately, shutting down the electricity. Cutting off the gas and using the two fire extinguishers at hand.
Shouts of fire were spreading among boarders and the care staff.
The school has a bell for emergency and the matron rung that. The girls know, said principal Karen Francis, that means “evacuate and take nothing with you”. That was done, the girls were counted off and all were accounted for.
The section of the building that they occupied was not damaged anyway nor was the main building with its distinct architecture and signage of Westwood, the 135-year-old institution.
Fitzroy Lewars, member of the ancillary staff who praises Mr Taylor said he was in Stewart Town, Trelawny the small village dominated by Westwood on the hill, when he saw the fire. By the time he got back to school he said Mr Taylor was well into action. The first fire unit arrived quickly and then up to four came, from Brown’s Town, 12 miles away over awful roads and from Falmouth further away.
The area that burned was quite close to the school’s water tank and so it wasn’t hard for Mr Taylor ,who knows that system even in his sleep ,to get the pumps going and then to refill the fire units when they ran dry.
On Tuesday morning two staff members including Mr Lewars were using those tiny green garden hoses to cool down the burnt material and keep away flickers of fire. Staff, ancillary and academic and administrative sat around sharing details and thoughts. Some ventured into the burn areas where flame discoloured sheets of zinc sat atop each other, rafters charred and cut down by the fire hung precariously over dining tables and scorched benches and chairs, and items of heavy duty equipment were unrecognizable in room after room from which the skies were visible. Next door in an area converted recently to a dining room that has served hundreds of girls, food and baskets were neatly stacked, up from a fire operations wet floor under the gaze of Canon KD Pronger.
Said one of the staff: “God is good, man. It never reach the main building.” Up the hill rolled another bus with girls going to their dorms to get ready to go home. Then the uniformed Westwood chorused “Thank you Mr Wilson” to the bus driver.
Charmaine Fletcher Peart has long left Westwood but was among those chatting to staff and looking at the damage to better tell other ladies in the Past Students Association what had happened and how they could help.
Across the road from the fire, at Woodlands at the Karl Fuller Dorm, principal Karen Francis herself awakened by the fire nearly 12 hours earlier was talking to yet more reporters. Still shocked by the setback, she tried to be calm as she was asked about the schedule for the next few days.
The school was closed for the week and this week, with exams on, students have already been notified and returned to dorms. Now the building committee of the board is working out where to build the dining rooms, given that a decision has been made to look for a new area for a fresh start to that part of Westwood life.
