A FIRE , ON TUESDAY THREE WEEKS BEFORE SCHOOL SECOND TERM STARTS , has created a crisis as 120-A Level pupils will not have shelter when the second school term starts in three weeks.

Plumtree High School has no source of alternative accommodation to house the affected returning 120 A level pupils who lived in the fire damaged hostel..

The fire was spotted by a witness on the ground floor of Lloyd House just after 9PM on Tuesday night.

Plumtree fire brigade fought the blaze but failed to extinguish the fire, when an all too famous Zimbabwe saga occured,…yes,..the fire tender broke down and couldn’t release water.

This is quite common in Zimbabwe fires and there is almost no point in calling the fire brigade when anything is on fire because its either the fire tender is out of service, breaks down on its way to the fire, arrives with no water, runs out of water, has no source of water,,, fails to pump water or a whole host of other ‘excuses’

This is so serious, and the Plumtree fire brigade actually had to send an SOS to Bulawayo Fire Brigade, 100km away which turned up two hours later clearly to confirm that the hostel had truly caught fire, because the school hostel was already a shell.

The combined fire fighting team fought the blaze for three hours and finally extinguished the smouldering shell at about 3AM on Wednesday morning. More news to follow. By Sibusiso Ngwenya