Waldorf News

Glasgow Steiner School Building Destroyed by Fire

GLASGOW — Plumes of smoke billowed out of the towering Victorian building in Glasgow’s West End as children as young as three watched, horrified. Evacuated in just their indoor clothes and tiny slippers, the snow fell on pupils of the Steiner School while chaos ensued all around them.

Ten fire engines screamed to the scene, effectively shutting down the densely populated area of Yorkhill as 55 firefighters tackled the inferno at around 11:30am on Tuesday, March 26. A saving grace was that the fire started in the attic space, far removed from where children laughed and sang and learned. It is presumed the cause was electrical.

Standing to face the media as the beloved B listed building burned, shell shocked school manager Kathryn Turner could barely speak. Words like ‘devastated’ and ‘heartbroken’ didn’t seem to quite encapsulate the scale of the tragedy for the close knit school community. Now, just over a week on, the exhausted leader knows the full magnitude of the fire still hasn’t sunk in.

“The reality of it kicks in but you still wait to wake up and find that it’s not happened,” she said. “It has been a really busy time for us, we’ve made a lot of progress in a week but, I don’t think it will sink in for a long time yet. At 3am on Wednesday morning, I was still counting in my head to make sure we’d got everyone out. I knew, logically, that everyone was out but still, you keep counting.”

Thankfully, a total of 65 children – aged between three and 12 – and 20 staff did make their way out of the Lumsden Street school as the fire alarm sounded at 11.30am. Crews were called to the scene after a blaze started and could be seen spreading to the roof and spire of the building. Incident Commander ACO Lewis Ramsay said: “On arrival, crews were faced with a very well developed fire and following initial assessment, the Incident Commander requested additional resources, including a high-reach appliance. Crews were immediately deployed wearing breathing apparatus and using hose reel jets to tackle the fire that was spreading to the roof space. A total of 10 appliances, with 55 firefighters, were on the scene.”

Kathryn credits the staff and the pupils in achieving what she called a ‘textbook evacuation.’ She said, “I was in my office and literally, the fire bell rang. My initial thought is that it was a practice that I hadn’t been told about which is normal – to have an unannounced fire drill. Sometimes I’ll do them and not tell the teachers; sometimes they’ll do them and not tell me because we all need to be on our toes. So I just thought it was that. I got to the end of the corridor and could smell burning, then I realized it wasn’t.”

“The staff must be praised for the calm way in which they led the children out – especially in the stairwell, which was thick with smoke, meaning the children couldn’t see. One child was asked if she was scared and she said, ‘No, the teacher wasn’t scared so I wasn’t either’.”

As Kathryn dashed to usher children to safety, do head counts and call parents before they heard the news elsewhere she was struck by the wildfire progression of the blaze. “Even at that point, going through my head was: ‘There is a fire. We’ll put it out and get back in’,” she said, shaking her head. “My priority was getting the children out. I just remember looking back at it and seeing flames coming out of the roof – it did spread very quickly. Nobody expected that magnitude. You just don’t expect the building to be in the state it is currently in.”

The kindergarten pupils were sitting down around the table for their mid-morning snack of a bowl of fruit when the fire alarm went off. For Kathryn, the most emotional sight in the destroyed building wasn’t the charred children’s drawings or the burnt timber piled waist-high, it was those kindergarten children’s bowls – lying exactly where they left them, filled with sooty water.

The architecturally significant building was the last school to be designed by JJ Burnet and dates back to 1876. It is hoped that the shell structure can be retained but it is likely that all the internal fabric of the building will be lost. The project is estimated to cost in the region of several million pounds and parents have already got their thinking caps on to fundraise for any costs above those covered by the insurance.

Proactive parents also organized a poignant gathering to mark the end of term just two days after the fire. A touched Kathryn explained, “The Steiner term ends with a big whole school assembly which was due to take place on the Thursday and a number of parents got together and arranged for that to happen in Kelvingrove Park instead. Fortunately, the sun shone down on us on Thursday and as many pupils and parents as possibly could make it, met up.

“The Edinburgh Steiner School sent through recorders so the children could play. In the assembly, each class presents something – be it a song or a piece of music – and that happened, in the park on Thursday. It was amazing to see. Everybody felt that it was important for the children to get together before the end of term and Kelvingrove Park was fantastic for us.”

More than 60 parents also got together, at a meeting held by the school, and their overwhelming support was palpable. One family who were looking at joining the school even came to the parents evening to enroll their child. Kathryn said,  “The general feeling at the meeting was one of relief – that we had found somewhere so quickly and that we could stay close together. There was a really positive energy to rebuild and come back stronger as well.

“At the moment we’re working with West George College, who are a private college who have recently bought the old Kelvinhaugh Primary building just round the corner from us. They have stepped in and offered us their top floor. The important thing for us was to keep the children all together. The Steiner community is so important and we wanted to keep that community together. The offer from the college has allowed us to do that.”

It is hoped that children will be back at their desks, providing that other kindly educational establishments donate them, by April 18.

In addition to West George College’s offer, the school have also received support from throughout the community – from the local coffee shop that gave out free hot beverages right through to a former parent, now based in California, who has set up an Amazon wishlist so that new equipment can be gifted to the school.

As she tells of these selfless deeds, Kathryn is lost for words. “Words are inadequate – the support that we’ve had has been fantastic,” she said earnestly. “They say tragedy brings out the best in people, don’t they? The community support has been overwhelming. As a school we’re a community, but this has really cemented us in the wider community. The fire service were on site very quickly, the sheltered housing accommodation across the road from us opened their doors and took our children in. We are incredibly grateful for the offers that we’ve had, it means we can get the school up and running with the minimum disruption to the children.”

Throughout the interview it is clear that the 101 pupils of the Steiner School are at the heart of every thought that Kathryn has and every word that she speaks.

“The most important thing in this is the children – they’ve been through a major trauma and they’ve sent the building that they love burn down,” she sadly said. “You can imagine, in a lot of situations, that if a child saw their school on fire they’d be thinking: ‘wayhey, time off’ but our children were just distraught. On Tuesday, there were tears. The camera crews would have seen parents and children in tears.

One wee one told her mum: ‘It’s ok; the fire was yesterday, it’ll be ok tomorrow’.”

For updates on the progress of the school and announcements about how to help, visit their website.

This article was prepared with articles from STV-Glasgow. To view “At 3am I was counting in my head checking we’d got everyone out” at source, click here. To view “More than 55 firefighters battle blaze at Steiner School in Glasgow” at source, click here.