700's
By Yazid ACHARY-KHAN
Over the holidays of 2020 to 2021 we came back to a vastly different school. The year 8’s and year 9’s were off campus as a result of an accident in the South Building. A possible electrical fault had caused a fire, causing the roof to collapse and the building to set alight, putting all three levels out of use. Fast forward a year and a half, and not only have we not gotten access to the 700’s, EBSS has also been lost to a fire.
So why has it taken so long to recover from the accident, what is the history of the buildings, and when can we expect to see these buildings back in use?
To start off, let’s address the issue of EBSS. Rebuilding EBSS is entirely out of the control of Unihigh. It is a facility owned by UniMelb, and rented out to us. The process depends largely on how fast the University works.
Moving on, why has it taken so long to finish the 700’s? Let's go through the steps of the plan for getting the building up and running again.
Step 1: Get in contact with the insurance company and see how much money they are willing to give us.
Step 2: See how much money the school council will give us. This money combined with the money the insurance company has make up the budget for the project
Step 3: Finalise designs and get approval from a committee of staff and students
Step 4: Invitation for tender. An invitation to tender is the process to generate offers from different companies and suppliers.
At this stage, the school has finalised its budget and the plans and is going to tender. Everyone we interviewed said that there is no exact date for when it would be ready, Mr Foster said that he was very wary of putting a date on it, but if everything goes as predicted, mid next year is when we can use them again but it could be earlier or later, nobody really knows.
The buildings we have in place both have asbestos in them. For those who don’t know, asbestos is a crystal used in many buildings and other products. It is composed of fibres, that if they get stuck in a person's lungs, can be extremely harmful. It is relatively safe if it is not exposed, but if it is, there can be dire consequences. The harmful consequences of asbestos have been known since at least the 20s, when pathologist W.E. Cooke named the lung disease ‘asbestosis’, connecting the disease with the fibre. The first recorded Australian to fall ill was from a mill hand in 1933. Since then multiple studies were done into the effects of asbestos and it is widely accepted that asbestos is dangerous. Despite that, it continued to be used in buildings until it was banned in Australia in 2003. We have known of asbestos being in our school buildings since the 1980’s, but a proper cohesive asbestos removal action plan was only put in place in 2015, following heavy criticism of the government’s lack of action.
Despite the long time taken before its removal, the problem seems to be largely solved. 1,712 school buildings were audited for asbestos, and as of 2020, 497 high risk schools had asbestos removed, a further 1,200 schools had medium risk asbestos removed.
So, to quickly wrap up, who knows when the 700’s will be back in use. What we do know is about the history of asbestos in schools, and how the fires helped kick start the process of removal here at Uni High. Looking on the bright side, we have gotten the library and the 600s back in use, and in much better shape. We shouldn’t look over the hard work put in by the tradies, designers, and staff in getting the south building (mostly), up and running again.