Books help school restart after fire

GENEROUS DONATION: Clinton Homes and Adrienne Staples organise books to go to Paraparaumu School, which lost its library in a fire. PHOTO/ANDREW BONALLACK

A fire which ripped through Paraparaumu School has brought in a flood of donations, including about a 1000 children's books from South Wairarapa District Council.

About half of the 125-year-old Kapiti Coast school was destroyed in the blaze on Sunday night, which took 60 firefighters to put out.

Principal Steven Caldwell was very thankful for the book donation and said it was really generous.

"Our entire library went up in smoke," he said.

"We have no books, so this gets us started and having kids with books in their hands.

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"We are absolutely overwhelmed and humbled by the community and from outside the community."

He said it would help normalise things for the 160 school children until their library was rebuilt.

"We can't wait to receive them."

As well as the library books, archival material and teaching resources were lost and four classrooms were gutted.

The school is currently shut but Mr Caldwell said they were aiming to be open next Wednesday, working in the classrooms that were left undamaged

The books were children's library books from the Featherston, Martinborough and Greytown libraries that had been taken out of circulation.

The council held a book sale over the weekend to get rid of surplus books but were still left with about 2000 children's books.

Clinton Homes, from council contractor City Care, who came to move them, suggested asking the school whether they would like them and is delivering them to the school, for free.

South Wairarapa Mayor Adrienne Staples said they wanted to help get the school's library back up and running.

"We had taken the books out of circulation and were looking for a good home for them.

"We can't think of anywhere better than Paraparaumu School."

Three teenage girls have been arrested in connection with the fire and have appeared in Porirua Youth Court.