FIRE!!!!!!!!!

What an exciting day at work yesterday!

There was an announcement made early in the day that we would be having an indoor recess due to cold temperatute (-39 C). At 10:30, the beginning of recess, the bell rang; however, this bell was different - it was the fire bell!

The kids in my class are very good at fire drills, so they started for their coats and were lining up at the door to go out. Suddenly there was an announcement, "This is not a drill..." There was some confusion in the class. A boy stopped getting his coat on and said, "She said it wasn't a drill!" I guess he thought that meant that the bell was just going off in error (and he wasn't the only one!). I looked at them and told them that if this wasn't a drill it was the real thing and we had to leave immediately!

I grabbed my coat and the attendance for the day while sending my class out the door and down the stairs. I turned off my light and closed the door behind me. I followed the kids down the stairs and closed the fire doors along the way. Once outside, my class lined up across the driveway and I did attendance. I reported that all of my students were safe and then helped to zip up the coats of panicked grade 1 students. I also opened my coat and shared half with a staff member who wasn't near her coat when the bell rang.

We waited outside for the firetruck. After about 20 minutes we were allowed inside the school, but we were confined to the gymnasium. When we entered the building and passed the Kindergarten - Grade 2 Wing we could not see down the hallway. Black smoke filled the hall and their was a heavy smell of smoke in the air. I am not sure why we went back into the building when we could have gone to the church next door or to the recreation complex or college campus located behind our school. I guess the fire was either under control or out at this point. The fire chief must have said it was alright, but the smell was strong and affecting both staff and student with asthma. We sat in the gym until 11:45, waiting to hear about whether or not there would be school that afternoon. We were told to come back in the afternoon and that the smell would be gone by then. They had a fan they were using in the two wings that smelled of smoke - 15 minutes upstairs, and 15 minutes downstairs. This meant only twice per area over our 1 hour lunch break. Let's just say that I am glad I was taking my class skating at the local arena (pronounced I-reena here for some reason?!) and would not be in the building. The smell was still heavy and you could feel the smoke in your chest.

What happened?

The French immersion kindergarten teacher sent her kids for a washroom break before recess. The girls came back and told their teacher that the washroom was on fire. She could tell by the looks on their faces that they were not making it up, so she ran down the hall. She told me that she saw flames shooting from one of the stalls so she ran out and pulled the fire alarm. It looked as if someone had started a fire by lighting the toilet paper on fire which, in turn, lit the plastic holder on fire.

Apparently a substitute teacher remembered that a girl from her grade 2 class had been in the girls washroom before this all started. It turns out they called her out and found a lighter on her.

I am please to say that with all that could have potentially gone wrong, everone came out safe and sound (although inhaling smoke from burning plastic can not be good for you!).