On Tuesday, Sept. 17, a fire occurred at the Academies of Loudoun in the welding classroom. According to online sources, the fire caused an estimated $1 million of damage to the school with two minor injuries of a teacher and a firefighter.
The fire started in the welding classroom’s fume extraction system just after 1 p.m. Students were evacuated at approximately 1:05 p.m., when the fire alarm was pulled. Fire and Rescue were called due to the pull-station activation and arrived at the scene shortly after at 1:09 p.m. The fire was put out within an hour and a half.
“We were all welding in our shop, but had to clean up before lunch because our teacher was leaving,” said junior Jacob Roberts, A-day MATA welding student. “As some people are still cleaning up, we see smoke starting to fill the workshop. We all get out of there, close the door so we’re in a classroom away from the smoke, and the smoke starts to fill the classroom. At that point, someone ran out to the hall to pull the fire alarm, and then we all went outside.”
All students and staff were swiftly evacuated from the building to stand in an open field, away from the smoke and fire. They were outside for roughly 2 hours while firefighters put out the fire and analyzed the situation.
Many students were not able to grab their phones during the evacuation, due to the suddenness of the event, leaving them without communication to their parents. The majority of students also did not have their backpack and other school belongings with them when evacuating the building.
“There was a large chunk of people that did not have their phones, and there was an even larger majority of people that did not have any of their stuff,” said junior Lexi Perry, A-day AOS student. “Luckily enough people had phones that people were able to call on other people’s phones.”
The fire occurred right before students’ lunch blocks, leaving many students hungry due to having left their lunch in the building during the evacuation. There were also no available bathrooms for students and staff to use.
“Since the fire alarm went off three minutes before lunch, literally no one had lunch, not even the teachers,” said senior Brooke Tessier, A-day MATA certified nurse aide student. “So all of us were kind of distracting ourselves from being so hungry.”
Once teachers took attendance, students were free to do what they wanted while waiting for further instructions and the fire to be put out. Many students spent this time sitting around and playing games with their classmates.
“In my group, we were all playing charades and other fun games like down by the banks and concentration,” Tessier said. “I saw other people playing different types of hands games to pass the time too. It really was fun because we just got to hangout outside. It was like everything was normal!”
After the fire was put out at 2:17 p.m, students riding buses were dismissed from school at 2:30 p.m. Most students were put on buses back to their home school and not allowed to go back into the building to gather their school belongings.
“They evacuated us by home schools, they would call your school, you would get on the bus for your school and be driven to your home school,” Roberts said. “It was only people that usually took the bus or drove but didn’t have their car keys on them since most people didn’t have their stuff. But if you had your keys on you or your parents picked you up, you could stay.”
Buses were given late notice of the dismissal and needed to carry more than the usual number of students. Some buses ended up being overfilled, leading to additional buses being called in to take students home.
“Once a bus showed up they would announce on a loudspeaker to everyone lined up with our teachers,” Tessier said. “But when the Freedom bus was called they didn’t have the correct number, so it was a bit hectic. When I finally got to the Freedom bus there were two seats left, and there were seven people trying to get on the bus so they had to call another bus to go to Freedom.”
Once bus riders arrived at Freedom, they were welcomed with food prepared by cafeteria staff to make up for their missed lunch before they were checked out by their parents.
“The lunch ladies, who are so sweet, stayed late for us to make us lunch with chicken nuggets, pizza and fries, grapes and little breads that everybody could take,” Tessier said. “All of us were starving. I reached that stage of hunger where you’re no longer hungry anymore.
Some students who had grabbed their car keys when leaving the building, were let back into the building after all buses were dismissed to grab their belongings at 3:10 p.m and were free to leave afterwards.
“After the buses left, it had been long enough and they cleared that we could go into [the building to] get our stuff, unlike the bus riders, and then we could leave the parking lot which was really busy,” Perry said.
The welding classroom, where the fire occurred, had some damage.
“When I went back for a brief moment to grab my stuff, everything looked mostly normal but it smelled absolutely horrendous,” Roberts said. “I could barely breathe. There was water leaking from the ceiling where the sprinklers and hoses hit the ceiling.”
Other classrooms in the building, such as Perry’s Biology classroom, which was in a somewhat close proximity to the welding classroom, were also noted to have been very smokey after the fire.
“I was in the school afterwards for seven minutes max to get my things,” Perry said. “And the way I walked out of the school, I just felt ill just from being in the building for such a short period of time. It was terrible. I know my teacher went back Friday and said it was still terrible.”
The Academies were closed from Sept. 18-20 due to a heavy smoke and smell left in the building. A-day students missed Thursday while B-day students missed both Wednesday and Friday. Events such as the Fall Plant Sale were rescheduled.
“The fire did put our culinary class behind a little, but nothing significant,” said Oliver Tam, B-day MATA culinary student. “I think that the fire and the resulting days off gave me a nice chance to take breather after a couple five-day school weeks.”
Since so many students left their belongings inside the school and had to go home without them, the Academies of Loudoun were open additional hours during the closed days to allow for students to go in and get their things. The building was open to students between 5:00-8:00 p.m on the night of the fire and 7:00-10:00 a.m the following day.
“I didn’t get to get my stuff until Thursday because I couldn’t go to any of the sessions that they provided to get your stuff at first,” Tessier said.” When I went into the building, I had to go into the attendance office where someone had to escort me to the co-lab rooms, because they moved some of our bags to get out of the smoke.”
Freedom offered loaner Chromebooks to students who were not able to recover their belongings from the Academies of Loudoun until later.
As the Academies of Loudoun opened back up to students Monday Sept, 23, most most things went back to normal, except for the welding class.
“On Monday we were in an alternate classroom,” Roberts said. “But by Wednesday we were back in our normal classroom. We’re not allowed to weld yet, but we’ll be back in our classroom downstairs, and then not next week, because our teacher won’t be here, but a week after, we should start welding again. I never expected to go back so soon. They’re trying to fix the fume extractor, which is what caught on fire. If they can’t fix it, they are going to buy personal fume extractors for each booth.”
Investigations are ongoing to determine how the fire may have started with additional efforts being made by the school to allow welding students to get back to welding as soon as they can.
Although most students were able to move on from the fire with only a slight delay in their classes, the fire was a memorable moment for some due to the suddenness and never having expected something like this to happen.
“The Academies had a fire scare before where something happened with our ice machine my freshmen year, but it was no big deal,” Perry said. “We were outside for maybe an hour and there was no smoke pulling out the building then. But to go outside and just see the smoke pouring out of the building, it was crazy like wow, the school is actually on fire.”
