KUMBAKONAM, India, 18 July 2004 — Police arrested five people for negligence after 90 children died in a fire that engulfed a primary school in southern India, while anguished parents buried the dead yesterday and questions emerged over who’s to blame for the blaze.
The children, aged between seven and 12 years, lost their lives when the thatched-roofed Saraswati Primary School in Kumbakonam — 350 kilometers (220 miles) from Madras, capital of Tamil Nadu — went up in flames Friday.
Rescuers told horror stories of the fight to save the children who struggled to flee the blaze, only to be blocked by a barred metal door that was locked.
“When we finally broke through and entered the first floor, we found all the (dead) children in a huddle, one child hugging another — all embracing each other and some clinging to the closed grill door,” one rescuer, Kaliyaperumal Sridharan, told AFP.
A total of 90 children were killed, Kumbakonam’s district administrator J. Radhakrishnan told AFP. Some 75 children died at the scene of the fire while others succumbed to their burns in hospital.
The dead totalled 46 girls and 44 boys whose charred bodies were handed to their parents for funerals. Eighteen children were in hospital but only one of them was in critical condition, a doctor said.
“The others will pull through,” said plastic surgeon V. Jayaraman.
Children lay on hospital beds with ointment applied to their burnt bodies and large banana leaves — a traditional remedy believed to soothe wounds — placed on their injuries.
Parents tried to cool their children by waving with bamboo fans.
At a funeral site near the school a seemingly unending parade of distraught parents brought their children for burials that began late Friday and continued yesterday.
“My entire world has collapsed as I’ve lost both my children,” sobbed 33-year-old laborer Simon Antonidas.
Funeral grounds keeper Yesumanickam, who like many Indians uses only one name, said: “I worked until early this morning (burying children) and picked up the spade a few hours later to bury more,” he said.
The government announced compensation of 100,000 rupees ($2,170) for each of the victims’ families, but relatives of the dead were not consoled.
“No amount of money can compensate me for losing my son, he was so precious to me,” said Manjula Murthy, whose nine-year-old boy died in the blaze.
For some, anguish turned to anger over the tragedy amid reports that teachers locked the door while they went to investigate the extent of the fire and told the children to stay put.
The headmistress and two other school officials have been arrested, along with the school cook and the organizer of the noon meal center, Radhakrishnan said.
Officials believed the inferno began in the school kitchen where cooks were preparing lunch for the children.
Sparks leapt to the thatched roof of the primary school, setting it alight and trapping the victims when it fell.
A teacher was being questioned by police but had not been arrested, police said.
Radhakrishnan said authorities were investigating accusations that the teachers abandoned the children when the fire grew out of control, as well as allegations the school illegally built the primary classrooms on a first-floor terrace.
One injured boy, Ramesh, said from his hospital bed: “Our five teachers fled, leaving us behind.”
The six burned-out classrooms had 38 students each. Police constable M. Jayaraman said: “We don’t know how this school has been functioning. Students here were packed in like chickens in cages.”
In the town, the mood was somber. Walls were plastered with black-edged posters.
“Let us pay tribute to our beloved burnt flowers,” read one, echoing a local Tamil language saying that “Children are like flowers in bloom.”
Thousands of mourners filed through the town yesterday in a massive silent procession. Rahul Gandhi, scion of the powerful Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and a leader of the national ruling Congress party, visited the injured in hospital yesterday while his mother, Congress President Sonia Gandhi, who led the party to victory in recent in national elections, was due to visit the town today.
