School remembers fire

DOZENS of former staff members gathered at Korumburra Secondary College on Friday to commemorate 20 years since fire guttered the school’s administration wing in 1993.

Remembering: firefighter Bill Rodda, former school council president Cheryl Routley and assistant principal of 1993, Peter Biggins reflect on the fire that guttered a section of Korumburra Secondary College 20 years ago.

Former teachers recollected memories of the rebuild, while firefighters who battled to preserve other parts of the school commented on the sheer size of the fire that was.
Korumburra CFA captain Bill Rodda was incident controller when the CFA attended the fire 20 years ago.
“Coming over the little rise towards the school and seeing the flames was one of those ‘oh expletive’ fires,” he said.
“We were very lucky it was a still night. If it was a windy night, the whole school would’ve gone up.”
Peter Biggins was the assistant principal at the time of the fire and said it was devastating, but the school community helped rebuild.
“It was a big turnaround for the school,” he said.
“The community support was very strong and everyone did a lot of fundraising and everyone was pleased the school was going to be renewed and it was the rebirth of a school in many ways.
“Up until then, a lot of kids were going to other schools in other towns but after that it was a very community based school.
“It was a critical time of the year with Year 12 students one week from finishing and over the course of the next week we got an extra year level back each day and worked from there.
“I guess it was fortunate it was at the end of the year and we could battle through to the end of the year.”
Current principal of the college Terry Harrington said like back in 1993, the school is continually looking towards the future and development is in the pipeline.
“Probably in terms of the trade training centre, there will be a building that will be worked on in the woodwork area,” he said.
“We’ve also been in the pipeline of doing some refurbishing of classrooms and general rebuilding of all areas of the school over the next five years in terms of facilities.”
The college staff has also been working on rebuilding the culture of the school.
“There will be a new leadership beginning around the school next year with a new principal,” Mr Harrington said.
“My role has been to come in here for the year and work with the rebuilding of the leadership culture and the general operations and organisation of the school and to hand it over to a new principal and that has been done.”
Mr Harrington said the school has made great progress in the past year.
“I believe this school has come ahead in leaps and bounds just this year after facing some challenges around changes to enrolments and identity, and I feel that it is time to move forward from that now,” he said.

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Posted by Jacob De Kunder on Oct 22 2013. Filed under Community. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry