An unexpected fire drill during 7th period surprised many students and teachers today. Usually, fire drills at West are scheduled well in advance and everyone is informed and prepared. However, this was not a drill, nor was it an actual fire.

PE teacher Anne Heselton shared her thoughts on what happened to trigger the alarm.

“Honestly, stuff like this happens all the time, like when cooking or working with burners,” Heselton said. “There are teachers that should be banned from using the microwave because of the amount of times that they’ve burnt popcorn.”

Students themselves seemed confused and felt that it was disruptive.

“Usually teachers can plan around it and my class was studying for a test when it happened,” junior Amarah Amanat said. “Everyone was talking outside about how they think someone pulled it, and that’s just dumb.”

“I was in the middle of lunch when it happened. If it wasn’t a drill or a real fire I don’t know why it happened,” junior Bella Reza said.

Director of Security Michael Pechter explained what actions have and will be taken.

“Something has to have caused the fire alarm to set off, but it is too preliminary right now to say exactly what it was,” Pechter said. “We have a numerous amount of security officers whose jobs are to watch people and we also have numerous cameras throughout the building that are high quality. We will conduct an investigation in determining the cause.”

Principal Dr. Jason Ness also agreed that it is imperative to conduct the investigation before jumping to conclusions, but was impressed with how the student body and faculty reacted to the sudden interruption.

“[Right now] even I haven’t had a chance to talk to anyone about this, but we will have a meeting to discuss and localize the cause [of the fire alarm setting off],” Ness said. “The good news is that we use this as an unannounced fire drill and to gauge people’s responsiveness, how fast we can get out of the building and what-not. Everyone did an amazing job actually.”

Further investigation will be conducted to determine the cause of this unexpected interruption.