Fake fire at RSS
By Maddie Snelgrove
When you hang around the school after the actual school day is done, you’re bound to witness something happen! But it’s usually not as… full of excitement as today. I was staying after school with some other students and Mr Vanness working on a new art project; as we were leaving the room, we saw students from the drama class running down the hall laughing and yelling to each other something about “sprinklers,” “water,” and “broken!”
Naturally, Mr Vanness (who had just got stitches yesterday for a little in-school accident), when another janitor ran by saying that someone had broken the head off of one of the sprinklers in the gym!
Not very long after many people had run into the gym to watch (including academy kids, drama students, and other random kids still hanging around the school), the fire alarms went off throughout the entire school. We were almost locked into the gymnasium wing of the school since some of the doors automatically shut, so I was stuck there for about twenty minutes to a half hour holding the door open for curious students, janitors, staff, and a couple firemen who responded to the scene.
They ran back and forth trying to figure out how to shut off the alarm and water. The alarm was finally turned off and I was able to make my way into the gym to see what was happening at that point. The junior boys’ basketball team had been practicing in the gym, and when I walked in, I found them and a few other students holding one of the yellow mats open to catch water, the ones that RSS uses at the graduation ceremonies, as if they were kindergartners playing with the big parachute!
But of course, there was a hole just large enough to let water out, so people were constantly having to mop up the dirty mess.
Finally, the water slowed down and the students were able to dump the water into a garbage bin and get back to their basketball practice. The rest of the students still at school got back to what they were doing before the incident, but the staff, janitors, and Ms Hebert were most likely still there for a while trying to fix the sprinkler head so they could hold PE classes tomorrow.
It’s not every day that one gets to witness one of the “bigger” events that happens at Rossland Secondary School!
