Fire Destroys $100 Million in Books, Computers

The blaze at its peak the night of March 8. Photo courtesy One Laptop per Child.

This is incredibly heart-breaking.  A fire at Peru’s main state educational materials warehouse last week destroyed roughly half a million textbooks, 61,000 laptop computers and 6,000 solar panels that had been destined for schools in the nation’s poor rural communities.  Education Minister Patricia Salas estimated the loss at $103 million.  The blaze comes just as Peru’s school year begins.  Salas told reporters that the overnight blaze “affects prospects for thousands of Peruvian children to begin classes with the materials and services the state had for them.”

Officials are still investigating the blaze, which broke out around 9 P.M. local time last Thursday, March 8, and took 11 hours to control.

The destroyed computers were purchased from the U.S.-based nonprofit One Laptop per Child Association, which has provided low-cost computers to the world’s most isolated and poorest children for the past five years.  Peru is the program’s largest recipient in Latin America.  The computers are rugged, low-power, white-and-green XO laptops.

Many of the destroyed books were in indigenous languages, such as Quechua and Ashaninka.  They had been written for children ages 3 – 5 living in Peru’s eastern regions where the majority of the country’s native languages speakers are concentrated.  Peru has about 9 million students in a public education system ranked among the poorest in the Western Hemisphere.

The warehouse was unrecognizable afterwards. Photo courtesy One Laptop per Child.