Fiery roof collapses on children

Crowds of sobbing parents, some beating their chests in anguish, crowded around ambulances at the scene of the fire that killed more than 80 children at Kumbakonam in Tamil Nadu yesterday.

Witnesses said the school's narrow entrance may have prevented some of the children from escaping the flames.

Nearby residents had started dousing the flames and trying to rescue the children before firefighters arrived, a senior fire department official said, but the efforts were apparently hampered by the narrow and steep stairs of the school, and by the few exits.

The fire department brought in heavy equipment to smash through walls of the building in an attempt to reach the children. Rescuers found many of the charred bodies lying two and three deep, some locked in embrace.

Firefighters said the victims stood no chance of survival as the building's third floor thatched roof collapsed on them. "They were surrounded by fire from all sides. They had no hope from the moment the fire started," a fireman said.

District administrator J. Radhakrishnan said the fire could have started in the school kitchen where cooks were preparing lunch or it might have been sparked by an electrical short circuit.

With the district administration unable to handle the situation, medical teams had to be rushed from nearby major towns to help the local hospital doctors. Till late in the evening, parents and relatives of children, who had either died or were injured could be seen wailing at the hospital, according to eyewitness reports. Nurses placed large banana leaves – believed to soothe the burning skin – under the injured or on their wounds.

Hours after the fire, hundreds of small wooden stools lay toppled on the blackened floor, strewn with slippers, shoes, schoolbags, notebooks, lunch boxes and clothes.

Six blackboards still bore traces of the lessons the children were learning.

"Fill in the blanks," was written in chalk on one blackboard, asking the children to complete the spellings of words in the local Tamil language.

This is the second major fire in Tamil Nadu in the last six months. On January 23, 60 people attending a wedding were killed in Srirangam town, about 315 km from here, died when the thatched roof of the marriage hall caught fire.