Thousands of students evacuated the school on Thursday, May 15, as the fire alarm went off twice, once around 11:15 a.m., and another at around 1:40 p.m.

“I wasn’t here for the first [evacuation,] but this one, I have a lot to do by next class, because I’ve been gone,” junior Hadley Ellis said. “So I [might] fail my next class for those six weeks. It’s really, really hot outside, and I want to do my schoolwork.”

The temperature at 2 p.m on Thursday was 94 degrees.

“During winter, [the evacuations are] super cold,” junior Claire Chinchilla said. “And then right now, it’s 92 degrees or something, and so it’s really hot. I hate it. It’s hot out here, so it’s just inconvenient for everyone.” 

The fire department gave the all clear to re-enter the building around 11:30 a.m. and 2:20 p.m., allowing people to go back to their classes.

“I don’t really like how they disturb our class and how they yell at us to get out even though there’s no fire most of the time,” cosmetology student Nitzan Koriat said. “Sometimes if we’re learning or like doing test corrections or something hands-on, it just disturbs us because we’re working and we have to leave everything behind and go out and we could ruin our mannequins.”

Since construction started at the beginning of the year, there have been multiple false fire evacuations. In a faculty email sent by Principal Chris Simpson, the cause of the second alarm was, “a plumber in the construction site accidentally hit a pipe that disrupted the fire pump, triggering the alarm.” 

Officials do not know the cause of the first fire alarm.

“Construction should turn off the alarms,” Chinchilla said. “The reason why they go off is because of the construction that’s going on. So if they would not force us to be outside, especially when it’s unnecessary, because we know why it’s happening. They make us go outside anyway, which is just not necessary.”