Not just a drill; what happened at IBW on May 29?
Most Ida B. Wells-Barnett High School (IBW) students did not plan to spend their Friday morning standing in the rain on the football field. However, on May 29, the sprinkler system had other plans.
Around 9:45 a.m., the fire alarm blared through the school, disrupting classes and causing confusion among students and staff, as no drill was planned for the day. “I was in health [occupations], and I was working on a packet, and then I heard this like whooshing noise,” said Anthony Vacarella, a freshman at IBW.
“The fire alarm goes off briefly, and we get ready to evacuate, and then the fire alarm stops,” said Abby Griffin, IBW English teacher, who was in the arts hallway at the time. “So we’re all looking around, like, what do we do? And then it starts again.”
Students began to evacuate the building and head out into the rain, onto the football field. However, amidst all this mayhem, administrators were telling teachers to keep the students who weren’t on the bottom floor in the building. While the fire alarm was going off, many teachers found it hard to stay in classrooms and evacuated despite instruction.
“If the fire alarm is going off, and we’ve been told to leave, you leave.” Said Lisa Klein-Wolf, the leadership teacher at IBW, “We do drills for a reason.” Many people felt that fire protocol should have been followed since it’s extremely dangerous for students to be inside while there’s a threat of a fire.
It was at this point that the situation descended into total chaos. The students gathering on the field were told to go to the gym, fire alarm still blaring, where teachers and student leaders would then struggle to get organized with virtually no information. However, rumors and theories spread quickly throughout the student body as they were left with little direction and lots of confusion. Students swapped stories of the small parts they had witnessed and attempted to make sense of an unprecedented event.
Mia Durham-LeBus, IBW Junior and soon-to-be Associated Student Body (ASB) president, took charge of the chaotic situation. She was able to find microphones and began directing students to once again evacuate the building.
Eventually, everyone was moved to the football field where they would spend the next 45 minutes awaiting instruction. Some students opted to leave campus altogether.
The issue ended up being a broken water pipe in the school’s sprinkler system. When the fire suppression system senses water flowing through the sprinklers, it automatically sets off the fire alarm. While it’s not unusual for sprinkler pipes to break, the way the event was handled was unusual.
Teachers and students expressed their confusion and frustration with the decision to move back into the gym. “You’re not supposed to go back in the building when the fire alarm is going off,” Durham-LeBus said later on. “I’m not sure who made the decision to move us back into the building, but that was a total oversight.”
What students on the field didn’t see were administrators desperately trying to fix the situation and alert families. “Admin is doing a lot of other things and they have a lot of other work to do,” said Durham-LeBus. “And while students are at the forefront of their minds, it’s really difficult for them to juggle all these things.”
When IBW Principal Ayesha Coning announced that students would be returning to the building, she was met with booing from students hoping for a canceled school day.
“Anytime there’s an emergency at all, it can really disrupt the entire building, the vibe, how safe people feel, how comfortable people feel, how focused people are,” said Griffin. “Having a moment of chaos in an emergency situation that we do a bunch of drills for all the time really just ruined the rest of the day.”
However, with one week left until finals, many students and teachers needed the time to prepare. Administrators were eager to bring students back into the building, especially since furlough days have already shortened the school year.
Unfortunately, the evacuation did affect the end of fifth and beginning of sixth period. “If [classes] were doing critical learning time…those are times where teachers need to make that executive decision…to make sure that content is not on the final,” said Durham-Lebus.
The universe was not on IBW’s side that Friday, but the school is being modernized in the coming years. While there’s always a chance this could happen again, hopefully administrators, teachers and students can learn from the experience and be better organized in the future.
