On Thursday night under the coward’s cloak of darkness, arsonists lit the fuse on what must rank as one of the most senseless vandal attacks in Wagga in recent memory.

The fire ripped through the CSU south campus building, gutting the inside and taking with it a stockpile of thousands of unsold books from this month’s Wagga Rotary Book Fair.

Any vandal attack is unconscionable but this one was particularly hard to fathom.

The book fair is one of the city’s most cherished charity events, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for the needy in its “storied” past.

Fuelled by the donations of locals and the generous spirit of local Rotarians, the event has become a symbol for all that is great about our community.

But in a single act of bastardry, the arsonist has plunged the fair’s immediate future into jeopardy.

With books destroyed and its storage facility effectively a write-off, the fair has been rendered homeless.

It now faces the very real prospect of being cancelled, or dramatically scaled back, for 2017.

The Rotarians are understandably shellshocked.

As book fair coordinator Graham Russell remarked on Monday: “Last week we raised $50,000 and just like that we’ve lost almost everything.”

Surely there’s an organisation in Wagga that could provide a new storage home for the event?

We should never forget what an enduring force for good our Rotarians are.

They do far more than put the sizzle in our sausages and take our tickets at the gates of local events.

Their fundraising in communities like Wagga has helped touch millions of lives locally and abroad.

Their work has also helped finance an inspiring campaign to rid the world of polio.

As such, this blaze was not just an attack on the Rotary club, but an attack on everyone in the community who has benefited from them.

Of course, for every halfwit prepared to commit such a reprehensible act, there’s a thousand people in Wagga ready to condemn it.

And that’s a fact well worth remembering.