No casualties were reported on Monday morning after a fire broke out at a school in the Sirikot village of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s (KP) Haripur district, according to DawnNewsTV.
More than 1,000 female students were inside the Government Girls’ High Secondary School Sirikot when the fire started, reported The News correspondent in the area. Fire and rescue officials arrived with a fire brigade vehicle and managed to extinguish the blaze after it had raged for over two hours.
Vehicles from the Haripur and Ghazi Tehsil Municipal Administrations (TMAs) were also called to the site, although they had not yet arrived by the time the fire was controlled, the correspondent added.
While there was no official statement on the incident’s cause, Rashid, the father of a student, mentioned that his daughter was in the classroom where the fire began. He noted that it started with sparks coming from the roof, suggesting a short circuit as a possible cause.
Dawn.com’s correspondent described how the fire quickly spread through the building, gutting the structure, furniture, and paper records inside the school. Mobile phone videos from the scene showed huge plumes of smoke billowing out of the school premises, with debris from burnt roofs falling as flames raged inside. Dozens of locals gathered outside the school, witnessing the destruction.
KP Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur took notice of the incident, ordering the provincial education department and district administration to determine the cause of the fire and submit a report. He also directed that all damages to the school building be repaired immediately to ensure academic activities could resume, according to a statement from his office.
This incident is the latest in a series of fires in Haripur over the past few years. In December, a woman was killed, and eight animals perished when a cattle pen caught fire in Haripur’s Khanpur tehsil. The summer of 2022 saw massive wildfires in Haripur and three other KP districts, destroying hundreds of acres of forestland. In October of the same year, a fire destroyed records and furniture in the office of the Pak-Austria Institute of Applied Sciences and Technology in Haripur’s Mang area.
