Students Evacuate For the Second Time this Week

Fire alarms rang over SDA for the second time this week, waking students from first-period drowsiness and forcing them onto the field.

The alarm was triggered in the gender-neutral bathrooms by the Mosaic. These are the same bathrooms where Monday’s fire started, according to Principal Bjorn Paige.

The cause of this particular alarm (and likely Monday’s alarm) appears to be someone vaping in the bathroom, said Paige. This is suspected because the bathroom didn’t suffer any damage and the detector in the gender-neutral bathroom is set off by smoke, not heat. In any case, the investigation is still ongoing and involves both school officials and law enforcement.

Though he had information on this alarm, Paige said he wasn’t sure if the other fires this year were caused by arson, or by something else: “We’re working with police and fire to investigate why there would’ve been any kind of fire in the bathroom, and when we see that repeated nature of it, that makes us curious.”

Paige said he believes that the alarm in the bathroom in the 40s is triggered by heat, meaning that just vapor would be unlikely to set off an alarm.