Students from Port Coquitlam school destroyed by suspicious fire return to class at alternate facility

Students from a Port Coquitlam, B.C., elementary school destroyed by a massive fire — which authorities have deemed suspicious — returned to class Monday morning, albeit at a different facility.

Around 250 students from Hazel Trembath Elementary were bussed to Coquitllam's Winslow Centre, a former high school now serving as a School District 43 administrative and meeting centre. 

Officials spent the past week preparing for the centre for the students, but Port Coquitlam Mayor Brad West say it is only a temporary fix.

"I want to see the school rebuilt and I want to see it rebuilt as quickly as possible," said West. "That's why in Port Coquitlam we have asked our staff to prioritize any application that comes to rebuild the school and to waive any applicable city fees that come with rebuilding the school."

School staff and district administrators met with families Friday to provide an update on the preparations at Winslow Centre.

"Teachers were putting the finishing touches on their classes, their shelves are filled, furniture is set up, everything has been painted," Port Coquitlam school trustee Michael Thomas posted to Facebook. 

The school — which was first built in the 1970s in the suburb of roughly 60,000 residents east of Vancouver— was consumed by a blaze in the early hours of Oct. 14. Authorities have deemed the fire suspicious. No one was hurt in the blaze, said RCMP.

West said police are reviewing hundreds of hours of surveillance footage and interviewing more than 100 witnesses. Specialized help has also been brought in from another jurisdiction. 

"I am told the country's best fire investigator is on the scene doing their work to try and understand what the cause of this [fire] was," he said. 

According to West, a donation campaign to provide supplies to the alternate classrooms at Winslow Centre has been an overwhelming success.

"We probably have enough supplies to outfit Hazel Trembath five times over. So it does show you that in hard and tragic moments, when things seem bleak, there are these silver linings."