A thick black plume of smoke alerted people across Dundee and beyond to a fire in the east end of the city on Sunday and stopped it damaging a new £8 million primary school being built for the children of Whitfield.
Tayside Fire and Rescue were inundated with calls about the blaze and a quick response prevented any damage being caused to the new building.
Many callers had pinpointed the school as the centre of the fire. Fortunately, fears that the building had been damaged were quickly allayed when firefighters called to the scene at around 6pm found a pile of polystyrene alight on a paved area in front of the school.
Work on the new school, to replace Whitfield and Newfield Primaries, started on the site in Summerfield Avenue in October and is expected to be completed by spring. The school includes 21 classrooms, an 80-place nursery, a gym hall, a music room and public areas.
Crew manager Thomas Strachan, from Kingsway Fire Station, said, “It was close enough to the building that there was the possibility of it being spread but because of the black reek that came off the polystyrene we had multiple calls about the fire.”
A Tayside Police spokeswoman confirmed that the cause of the fire is under investigation.