By Daniel Nash
The Courier-Herald
East Pierce Fire and Rescue responded to a fire alarm at North Tapps Middle School Friday morning. It turned out not to be a fire emergency and nobody was hurt.
A teacher pulled the alarm when smoke began filtering into a classroom during third period.
Students and staff were evacuated according to standard fire drill procedure and firefighters responded to the automatic alert from the alarm.
The smoke came from a malfunctioning fan in the heating, ventilating and air conditioning system in the mezzanine above the classroom.
“It was good (fire drill) practice for students and staff,” Principal Pat Keaton said. “(The malfunction) caused a lot of smoke and odor, but it also caused the power to shut down in the building, so luckily that likely prevented an electrical fire.”
Five engines, a medic, a ladder unit and the battalion chief all responded to the automatic alert in keeping with procedure. When the nature of the emergency was confirmed, all but one engine and the battalion chief returned to the station.
The remaining unit helped shut down the malfunctioning unit and clear out the smoke with fans. The electrical odor will only leave with time, Deputy Chief John McDonald said.
“The school did exactly what it was supposed to do,” McDonald said. “This is why we have fire drills.”
Lunch period began at 11:15 a.m. with few signs that anything out of the ordinary had happened, other than a few stray firefighters and some extra buzz in the multipurpose room.
Keaton walked among the tables, making sure students were calm about the alarm.
“Everybody OK?” he asked one table.
“Yeah,” a girl said, giving the thumbs up and barely looking up from her sandwich.
“Look at this,” Keaton said. “You would never know looking at the students that an emergency just happened. We have a great group of students here.”
Keaton credited the building and maintenance staff for taking care of the HVAC unit in such a way that the school only lost 30 minutes from its schedule.
“The only thing I can say is that we got a little wet,” he said. “It would have been nice if this had happened yesterday when it was sunny, but you can’t always plan your emergencies.”
