Fire destroys Carmel College library

Published: 22 January 2012
By: Robin Williams

Fire damage: New Carmel College principal Brian Eastaughffe stands outside the library extensively damaged in a suspected arson attack

THE student population at Carmel College, Thornlands will return to school as planned on January 24 but without access to their library, learning support and counselling facilities.

Investigations are continuing into a suspected arson at the school on Monday, December 20 that extensively damaged the library that also housed learning support and counselling facilities.

Newly appointed principal Brian Eastaughffe said he was expecting an engineers report late last week regarding the structural safety of major steel beams.

He said once the report was delivered the college would have a better idea of the extent of the damage and the steps needed to repair or replace the building.

"The damage was more significant than originally thought, the total library book stock was lost and deemed irretrievable," he said.

Mr Eastaughffe said fire also destroyed a bank of more than 30 computers and a number of textbook hire publications stored ready for distribution to returning students.

"We were lucky that not all our text hire books were stored in the library and we have already reordered those lost and expect them by the time school resumes or the days immediately following that," he said.

He said the college was also unlikely to suffer much from the loss of the library computers with other located throughout the school and the 2012 Year 9 and 10 equipped with laptops.

Carmel College is Mr Eastaughffe's first principalship, but he is confident of his new communities support.

"This is a very unfortunate incident but I know that the Carmel College community will work together to overcome this and to ensure a productive start to 2012," he said.

'There has been great support from the community and I'm sure with that support once we know what needs to be done it will all fall into place."

He said the college was already working on temporary measures to house the learning support and counselling services.

Carmel College opened in 1993 and has a student population of around 830.