At around 8:00 on the frigid Friday, December 6, the calm morning was interrupted by loud sirens blaring throughout the building, an announcer repeating, “an emergency has been found inside the building. Please evacuate immediately to the nearest exit.”
For those not located in the science hallway, the site of the emergency, only one thing was clear: this was not a drill.
Students scrambled to grab jackets and phones and locate the nearest door, gathering on the iced football field and bleachers.
By 8:10, the temperature had dropped to just 9 degrees, and the unlucky few who were unable to bring coats received thin foil blankets. Students moved away from the building’s long shadow into the sun, where it was slightly warmer and less slippery.
“At first, we thought it was just a regular fire drill and then while we were texting with people in the Annex, we realized their fire alarms didn’t go off,” SWHS sophomore Penelope Evans said. “And at that point me and my friend realized that we might be here a while.”
Through teacher information, first-hand accounts, and admin confirmation much later, the emergency was revealed to be an issue with a radiator in Ms. Tebbetts’s classroom. However, there was a substitute teacher in Tebbetts’s classroom at the time. The radiator began smoking intensely, and the fire alarm was pulled.
Mrs. Davis, another science teacher, described the scene to the Prowl.
“I’m not sure exactly what happened, but I do know that the safety and fire procedures were followed by the person that was in that room,” Davis said. “Then after the evacuation, I did see smoke from the room…I double checked just to make sure that students were not in that room, too.”
Students were able to re-enter the building once it was deemed safe, after 10 or 20 minutes; the science hallway closed and guarded. Students remained in their Period 2 classes for almost 2 hours total as the administration attempted to get the day back on track.
Due to the smoke that had filled the science hallway, students would have been at risk if they had resumed classes, so a select group of teachers and staff made a quick trip upstairs to grab backpacks, phones, lunches, coats, and their own belongings.
Meanwhile, students adjusted to the extended period. The study hall group enjoyed some warmth and quiet, listening to music and even watching movies or playing charades on their phones. Classes in the annex building were largely unaffected, and other periods simply extended their curriculum to fit the timeframe. Additional science students were brought to the auditorium.
“It was a little concerning at first, but because I’ve had two instances prior where a kid has pulled the fire alarm, I wasn’t that nervous,” Evans said.
The hallway appeared unaffected the following Monday. Although the incident was startling, the administration’s top priority was to keep students safe. Overall, the evacuation was executed quickly and smoothly, once more proving the efficiency and dedication of SWHS’s safety team.
