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Amish schoolhouse demolished
12/10/2006 16:39 - (SA)
Nickel Mines - Workers with heavy machinery rather than hand tools moved in before dawn on Thursday and demolished the one-room Amish schoolhouse where a gunman fatally shot five girls and wounded five others.
Construction lights glared in the mist as a large backhoe tore into the overhang of the school's porch at 04:45, then knocked down the bell tower and toppled the walls.
Within 15 minutes, the building was reduced to a pile of rubble. By 07:30, the debris was gone, leaving just a bare patch of earth.
The schoolhouse had been boarded up since the killings 10 days earlier, with classes moved to a nearby farm. The Amish planned to leave a quiet pasture where the schoolhouse stood.
Closure
"I think the Amish leaders made the right decision," Mike Hart, a spokesperson for the Bart Fire Company, said as loaders lifted debris into dump trucks to be hauled away.
The Amish are known for constructing buildings by hand, without the aid of modern technology, but for this job they relied on an outside demolition crew to bring closure to a painful chapter for their peaceful community.
A group of 20 to 30 people, many of them in traditional Amish dress, gathered nearby to watch as the schoolhouse was levelled.
"It seems this is a type of closure for them," Hart said.
- AP
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