Destruction of a Playground

Not too long ago, I took my oldest to soccer practice one night.  Practice is held at one of the area schools and there is a playground there.  Both my girls love this playground and look forward to playing on it when we go to practice. 

           (This a before shot.)

On this particlular night, as we got closer to the playground, we noticed orange netting surrounding part of the playground.  It was hard to see at first why because the sun was shining at such an angle it was hard to see very well.  Turns out, someone set fire to the playground burning down all the slides and walkways.  The monkey bars survived but not much else did.  Everything was charred and black.

                 (This is what it looked like after the fire) 

Both my daughters were very upset by this.  Neither of them wanted to walk by the playground the rest of the night.  My oldest was so upset she started crying when she had to go near it.  That night they both wanted to lay down to sleep with us because they were afraid.  Afraid of having bad dreams, afraid whoever started the fire would walk by our house, drop a match and burn our house, basically afraid of everything that night. 

Turns out the fire was set sometime after Back to School Night was over at this school by 2 teenagers who had been drinking.  As far as I know they still have not found out who they were.  The locals news here even did a story on it and interviewed a few children who play at this park.  Turns out it's going to cost upwards of $80,000 to repair the damages.   They have removed all pieces but the basic structure but still have not started rebuilding.