Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School had its second fire drill of the 2017-2018 school year on Friday, Sept. 22 during second period. The drill lasted from 9:18 to 9:25 a.m. MSD has one fire drill per month, and this drill is considered the September fire drill, however, this drill was unplanned.

“Whenever an alarm sounds, as a precautionary measure, we have to evacuate the building,” Assistant Principal Winfred Porter said.

A malfunction with a sensor due to damage from the hurricane led to the fire alarm going off in the absence of a fire.

“One of the sensors went bad because of the hurricane and made the fire drill go off, but we fixed it right away,”  head custodian Eddie Suarez said, “The mechanic was here and was able to do what was needed to fix it.”

There were false rumors of whether or not the faulty alarm had something to do with the air conditioning not working.

“It is nothing to do with the air conditioning,” Suarez said. “The problem with the air conditioning was that one of the belts broke, but we fixed it an hour before the fire drill happened.”

Some teachers believed that the air conditioning went off in conjunction with the fire alarm going off. However, this is contributed to other facts and not the fire drill.

“When the AC goes off, it take like 20-30 minutes to cool down and the teachers had the door open, so they were told to shut the doors, and they have not complained since,” Suarez said.