A suspicious fire has ripped through a local primary school in the small town of Walgett in NSW's north west. It's yet another blow to the community which lost its supermarket to a fire in 2019 and more recently has been battling to secure safe drinking water.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00 "Is nothing safe in this town?"
00:03 Bystanders watched in disbelief as firefighters tried to save what they could.
00:08 "Look at it!"
00:10 Walgut Community College Primary, one of only two public primary schools in the town, suffered
00:15 significant damage.
00:17 Its preschool building and another structure used as a hall were destroyed.
00:21 "It was coming out the openings of the doors, because we were standing at the shed, and
00:26 we got a full view of that and it was like, wow, this is really insane."
00:32 Firefighters only became aware of the second fire while they were dealing with the first.
00:36 "Look at that, taken back off again."
00:39 "Crews started work on the other side of the oval at the preschool.
00:43 Once they started to get that under control, it became very obvious that there was also
00:48 a second fire on the opposite side in this large shed behind me."
00:53 The fires are being treated as suspicious.
00:55 "We have handed the scene over to police, and that will be, police will conduct their
01:00 investigations."
01:01 It's not the first time Walgut has been hit by a major building fire.
01:05 The town's only supermarket was destroyed by fire a decade ago, and again in 2019, forcing
01:11 residents to wait 18 months until it was rebuilt.
01:15 And earlier this year, residents were forced to buy bottled water because of high sodium
01:20 levels in the town's bore water.
01:22 As for the fire, parents are glad it wasn't even worse.
01:26 "They did manage to save the playground, so there might not be the building, but there
01:31 is a playground, so there are small positives in the negative."
01:37 The state government says it will work to reopen the school under temporary arrangements
01:41 as soon as possible.
01:42 [BLANK_AUDIO]