A massive fire swept through the Government Girls Higher Secondary School in Sirikot village, Haripur district, while hundreds of students were inside. Nearly 1,400 girl students had a lucky escape on Monday when they were safely evacuated from the school building in a remote mountainous region of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, according to a media report.
No one was hurt on Monday morning when a school in Sirikot village, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s (KP) Haripur district caught fire.
Fire and rescue teams arrived with a fire truck and put out the fire after more than two hours. Additional vehicles from Haripur and Ghazi Tehsil Municipal Administrations (TMAs) were called but had not yet arrived.
There was no official statement about the cause of the fire, but Rashid, the father of a student, said his daughter was in the classroom where the fire started. He mentioned that sparks from the roof suggested a short circuit might be the cause.
Videos from the scene showed large plumes of smoke and debris falling from burning roofs. Many locals gathered outside the school.
Haripur has experienced multiple fires in recent years. In the summer of 2022, large wildfires destroyed hundreds of acres of forestland in Haripur and three other KP districts. In October of the same year, a fire damaged records and furniture in the office of the Pak-Austria Institute of Applied Sciences and Technology in Haripur’s Mang area.
