Ann's Blog On The High School Fire

Ann's second quarter blog #1:

"Fire destroys high school, plans for year uncertain" (cnn.com, November 3, 2006)

A destructive fire at Eastern Guildford High School in Gibonsville, North Carolina is leaving the future for its students unclear. The actual cause of the fire remains unknown, but they do know the location that the flames begun; a chemistry lab. A staff member of the high school saw the fire around two in the afternoon on the day of the fire, which was a Wednesday. This teacher attempted to extinguish the fire with a fire extinguisher. After realizing that the fire was too large, this teacher pulled the fire alarm causing a total evacuation of the building. The students, teachers and other staff members went to a church nearby. The total enrollment at Eastern Guildford High was 1,060 students, so over one thousand highschoolers are left without a school for the rest of the year. It has been about two days since the fire and students are confused about the situation; many are left in the dark at this point. One classic seventeen year old boy, Brandon Pride stated "I don't know what we are going to do about school or football" (a reasonable first concern...football) Then he went on to say "I wonder if we,ve lost our transcripts and what this is going to mean for the rest of the year and college. It looks as though the school board has scheduled an emergency meeting to clear up some of these burning questions.

Reading through this article I couldn't help but smile when I read poor Brandon Pride's quotes. I'm sure that upon hearing the fire alarm he first thought 'yeah man, no school for us no more dude...hey wait, what about football?' This might be a little harsh, but I just let my mind wander with it. Every school has a Brandon Pride, football fanatic. Being in this situation would be frightening. I can't imagine if this happened to Jefferson and we all had to separate and drive to different places for school every day for the rest of the year. This would be such a nightmare for everyone; the administrators, staff and students. Obviously, there is no easy fix. It isn't like they could just whip up another school in a heartbeat and no surrounding school would be able to accept 1000 students. It is devastating. I'm curious to find out whether the fire was intentional or accidental. Hopefully the latter. In any event, reading this article makes me appreciate school and all the opportunities it brings into all of our lives. I can't imagine losing it. I hope that they are able to make some sort of arrangement for all of their students.

Article From:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/11/02/school.fire.ap/index.html