Firefighters are tackling a major blaze at a historic building at one of Europe’s leading art schools.
The fire at Glasgow School of Art’s Charles Rennie Mackintosh building was reported at about 12.30pm.
The Scottish fire and rescue service said four appliances had been immediately sent from Cowcaddens, Yorkhill and Maryhill fire stations, and firefighters were on scene within four minutes.
Smoke could be seen billowing from the roof of the building and flames coming from some windows on the upper floors.
A post on Twitter from the school said: “The Mackintosh building is on fire, all have been evacuated & we will post updates as we get them. Currently setting up an incident number.”
As someone who (a) grew up outside Glasgow and (b) went to art school, it’s no surprise that I’ve spent a lot of time in Glasgow School of Art – whether it was short courses there while I was in high school, going to the degree shows each year or just visiting for the sake of it to see what’s happening, it was a regular haunt whenever I was in town, especially in later years; when I went back to Scotland for the first time in five years, I made a point of going up the hill just to see the building again, even though it was closed at the time I was there.
There’s something particularly heartbreaking about this news. It’s not just that a genuinely beautiful, unique building is likely destroyed – updates have suggested that the Mackintosh library has been completely gutted – but that it’s May! The degree shows, the final end-of-course work for the final year students, will have been either finished or about to be finished, and now all that work will have been destroyed as well. I can’t even imagine what it would feel like to see the culmination of four years of your life literally going up in smoke.
My heart goes out to everyone affected by this. It’s horrible. So, so tragic.