In the early hours of Saturday morning on Feb. 19, School Resource Officer T. Keary was awoken by a phone call from fellow School Resource Officer M. Thompson, telling him someone had set fire to the school recycling bins.
“I can’t say my first reaction, but I will say that I thought it was an extremely stupid thing to have done,” Keary said. “To do damage to any school building is stupid.”
The four recycling bins, which are owned by Abitibi Paper Retriever Recycling, are located near the loading dock. The fire happened at about 1 a.m., when two unidentified juveniles entered the site and threw an unknown substance into the bins, which caused them to catch on fire. The bins are also located near electrical transformers. Had the fire reached the transformers, the damage to the school would have been extensive.
“The building itself back there is brick and stone – fire won’t really damage that,” principal Scott Roberts said. “But if those transformers had caught – they carry electricity into the building – it would have been disastrous. It was a good-sized fire, from what we could see on the [surveillance] tapes. We were very fortunate that it’s not worse than it is.”
The recycled material inside the bins, which is collected every Friday by KAY club members, was lost in the blaze. The school receives money for each ton of recycling collected.
“Something like this sends a nasty message,” Roberts said. “So many people have spent their free time to make our recycling efforts happen, from all the students who recycle on a daily basis to the students who stay after school to collect it all.”
Although no arrests have been made, any student with information regarding the fire is encouraged to come forward.
“We’ve been in contact with our arson detectives, but right now the best lead we have is the surveillance video we have,” Keary said. “We got a pretty good video of the subjects.”
The recycling bins at Oxford Middle School were also set on fire that same night. Whether or not the attacks are linked is not yet proven, and the police investigation of the crimes is still active. Thompson urges anyone with information to report it and said that, depending on the circumstance, identity can be kept confidential.
“We just want to get the message out,” Keary said. “If you know something, come forward. Any information you can provide could be helpful. The bottom line is that people talk; when someone pulls something like this, and thinks that they got away with it, they brag.”
Measures are being taken by the campus security team to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again. The measures are being kept confidential, in order to retain their effectiveness.
Roberts hopes that the arsonists are done with the vandalism.
“We’re a school, we’re not a prison – we’re not going to put fences around our recycling bins,” he said. “I hope that with burning the bins one time, those individuals got whatever thrill they were seeking and will look for something productive to do next time – something that doesn’t involve burning other people’s property.”
Roberts said that although no one has officially been charged with the fire, the investigation isn’t over.
“Just because we haven’t yet doesn’t mean time can’t still catch up with these people,” he said. “Any future culprits may not get as lucky.”
