Fire Department called to salvage burning bathroom
By Lyle Hahn, Gabe Lee, and Sean Gallagher,
BlueDevilHUB.com Staff–
A large volume of black smoke emitted from the C-Wing men’s bathroom on Nov. 1. The fire department quickly dealt with the issue. However, many students were unable to get to their seventh period science classes and some students were even evacuated from classes in the area.
As of now, the cause of the fire cannot be confirmed.
Junior Lily Hessl was in her sixth period environmental science class when her class was forced to evacuate. Hessl said that vice principal Mark Simi came in and informed them that they needed to go to the quad. “He didn’t really explain what was going on and everyone was really confused,” Hessl said.
The fire department was on scene quickly. Their investigation is not fully completed. The HUB has requested the fire incident report but has not received it yet.
Despite the mass of smoke, no fire alarms were triggered in the bathroom. English teacher Drew Barclay provided some insight into with might have happened. “There were some deficiencies in the fire alarm system in the C-Wing bathroom,” Barclay said.
Barclay said that the fire alarm system in the bathroom had been only a heat detector and not a smoke detector. Therefore, when the fire started, the smoke did not produce enough heat to trip the alarm.
Currently, the main goal for administration is disaster control. Both the boys’ and girls’ bathrooms will be closed until repairs are finished and they are deemed fit for use.
Barclay is concerned about the closed bathrooms. “It creates a huge line at [other bathrooms] and students are spending even longer on bathroom breaks because they have to wait to use the bathroom, so that creates an instructional deficiency,” Barclay said.
The school’s temporary solution to the problem is to have a fire patrol, where staff members are monitoring the bathrooms until they can fix the fire alarm system. “I suppose they are going to switch out just heat [detectors] for heat and smoke detection,” Barclay said.
Administration assures students that safety is a priority on campus. “We take safety seriously here at DHS.We are thankful that all of our students were safe,” Simi said.
