My local train station is currently burning down

[thehardestpartis]

Reportedly due to children being on the station at 5:45 this morning and setting fire to an equipment cabinet.

AIBU to ask where the hell are the parents?! This will cause chaos in the town, reduce holiday maker visits and just generally worsen an already run down town.

The parents should be punished for arson with intent to endanger life, as should the children.

Paignton?

How old were the children?

5.45 in the morning? If they are kids they should be taken into care.

It’s unclear yet, but they seem to be somewhere between 11&15 according to local reports

Yep. Absolutely horrific. I wonder if they’ll even be able to repair it, or if it’ll just be that services start and end at Torquay now with them going down to Paignton just to turn around. It’s criminal.

Between that and the building being demolished it must be a right state in town at the moment. Definitely not a great holiday location right now.

It’s a nightmare traffic wise. This will just kill the town off, and it’s pretty much impossible to make your way into Brixham via public transport.

The children will all be above the age of criminal responsibility then. I can't imagine my kids even being up at that time in the summer hols let alone out. Makes you wonder if they were out all night. What a huge pain that will be if the station has to remain closed for any length of time.

@thehardestpartisfrom photos posted on devon live it doesnt look like it spread to the line, I did hear its affected the signalling at Paignton though.

But it does make me wander if the parents know their children are out causing so much trouble in the early hours, or if they even give a monkeys. We have it in Exeter where the kids are out stealing motorbikes and breaking into cars and trying their luck with houses. The police wont do anything so its a nightly occurrence.

The school holidays have only just started. We need the weather to change.

It's currently burning down? Did hotspots make it reignite after the fire was put out early this morning?

They probably made up they were staying at friends houses and stayed out all night. Idiots.

The parents probably didn't check, don't know the other parents or don't have their kids locations and parental controls on.

Looks like the footbridge has entirely gone, it spread to the main station building as well. Someone I know was working there and if someone hadn’t knocked on the door he’d have died!

The demolition crew have had to start taking the roof off, so god knows how this ends

No, we need parents to get their act together and parent their children.

We need to start doing what the US are doing and punishing the parents as well as the kids. It's the only way to start making people take responsibility for their negligence.

It’s time we started naming ‘children’ who commit serious crimes.
Rape, murder, arson, these are ‘adult’ crimes, no anonymity.

In my eyes the parents are just as responsible as the kids doing it. They have no grip on their children. It’s just terrifying

I am genuinely curious what kind of life these kids must have to be up so early to make trouble.

Late evening, I get it (I don't approve, obviously, but I get it)
that early? I don't know any child who is up.

This has happened in my area, yet the police say there isnt enough evidence even though these children are caught on doorbell footage and CCTV and the parents very quickly jump to their defence.

Shit ones, generally.

Down here it’s so rife. Parents who don’t care about education, kids running wild all hours of the day. You get it on the buses from about 7am, and then again at 4pm onwards. They’re vile.

I mean, you need to consider they might already be in care.

to be honest arson and kids is fairly pedestrian, it’s not unusual or new.

the difficulty with punishing parents is there is no support for parents who try to get help with their children before they do anything bad.

Yep same here. I'm mid 30s so not exactly old.. I used to hang around with some right dick heads in my youth but none of us would dream of doing half the shit kids do these days. Trouble is this gentle parenting has led kids to believe there is no consequences for their actions and the police not doing anything doesnt help with the lack of consequences either. Plus, 9 times out of 10 the parents are just as bad.

This is awful, I didn’t realise it was so bad in Devon. Round my area there aren’t any kids out at that time and nothing like this happens.

When I was a kid some local kids burned down a Tesco superstore 😱 it’s def not new

@ThisSereneGoose- my assumption would be that they didn’t get up at 5:30am to burn a train station down, but had still not gone to bed by 5:30am.

OP I’m hoping insurance will cover the rebuild and structurally it’s not that bad.