Deniliquin's Edward Public school damaged in break-in, arson attack

In the early hours of Saturday morning, firefighters rushed to Deniliquin's Edward Public School to put out the blaze.

The school, which is located on Butler Street, alerted the school community by posting about the incident on its Facebook page on Sunday afternoon.

"We regret to inform the Edward PS community that our school was the target of malicious damage and arson early on Saturday morning," the post said.

"We are looking forward to seeing our students. School will return on Tuesday, 19/7/22 as normal."

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Mathoura's Angela Price commented the news was "sad and disappointing to hear".

"Hope they are caught, so sad for these kids to go back to school and see," she said.

Fellow resident Rachel Finn echoed the sentiment, commenting: "so disappointing that this has happened to our school, hope they are able to find the culprits".

Fire and Rescue NSW commander Stewart Alexander said crews responded to the building ablaze at about 2am.

"What they discovered was that there was a class room a light and an adjoining store room that was built into it, as well, that was on fire," he said.

"They quickly knocked down that fire and unfortunately the building and the contents have suffered some heat, smoke and water damage, but otherwise are structurally OK."

Commander Alexander estimated hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of damage.

"The building will have to have everything pulled out of it, obviously the walls will need to be repainted and so on," he said.

"Most of those classrooms these days or modern classrooms have a lot of technology and audio visual equipment and that sort of stuff in them, so I'll assume that that was equipped with that sort of stuff.

"It's a big disruption on the school year and obviously on the students."

A NSW Police spokesman said a security patrol had reported the break and enter and it was being investigated with a number of exhibits seized for processing.

"Several classrooms were broken into and allegedly ransacked," he said.

"Persons unknown at this stage have entered the school grounds, damaged several rooms and potentially set fire to one of the rooms."

The spokesman said the ages and number of offenders was yet to be determined.

"School can continue regardless of the damage, which these muppets have done," he said.

Police are calling for any witness or people with information to call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.

The school is set to celebrate its 50^th anniversary this October.

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