CLARENDON, Jamaica — Scores of students at the Bustamante High School in southern Clarendon have been dealt a massive blow as the computer laboratories at their school went up in flames early Tuesday morning.

According to the principal, Wayne Evans, the students who take the Information Technology (IT) and Electronic Document Preparation Management (EDPM) classes will be at a great loss.

“It’s a very big blow for us. Our labs are utilised by the students, that’s how we get to develop them. Many times the students that come to us are on the lower end of performance and so we get to expose them to different types of facilities and learning experiences so the labs are used for those purposes. We also have our IT and EDPM students who are going to be very significantly impacted if we’re not able to recover from this in a very speedy way, ” said the visibly distraught headmaster.

Evans said he received a call about 2:00 am that there was a fire in one of the computer labs. He said it quickly got out of control so much so that by the time the fire brigade got to the scene, the blaze had spread to the entire building, destroying both labs.

“It is very unfortunate and we have been complaining about our electrical situation for a long time. We believe it may have been caused by the throwing up of wires on the main supply. We observed that fire was on the line before it went into the lab and while we can’t definitely say what took place, we suspect that that may have caused part of the problem,” he stated.

Meanwhile, chairman of the school board, William Shagoury, described Tuesday’s incident as a disaster.

“It’s a lot of computers that have been destroyed. With all the challenges the school has been going through and this now is another problem. As you fix something and try to do something else, something happens, we just can’t get a break. It’s a sad day for the school, a sad, sad day,” he said, adding that he is awaiting the findings of investigations into the cause of the fire.

In the meantime, Evans is appealing to the business community for help.

“We are appealing to everyone, business community, and everyone, the Bustamante High School needs your help, we are fighting a battle, we have done all we can do so please come on board to help our students, we believe in them so we are asking everyone to help us get back on board as we can’t have the students out for too long as it will impact them in a way we can’t recover,” he said.