Amongst annoyance and restlessness during Wednesday’s partial evacuation into Rezac, special education’s Terri Aiken broke out pink and blue balloons to entertain students with a game of Don’t let the Balloon Touch the Floor.

“Mr. [Randy] Nivert came in and told us that we needed to leave, and some people said they’d smelled gas, and we were just told to get out, so everyone was a little confused, but, I mean, it’s turned out to be a fun time,” senior Sydney Zafran said. “We mainly talked, and we played a game with balloons. It was fun; it was encouraging, and, I mean, it kept your mind off what was going on, so it was nice.”

During second hour, a suspicious gaseous odor made its way through the west end of first floor E-Hall, causing a maintenance worker to call Kansas Gas Service, which then alerted local emergency services before administration were notified.

“Officer [Jamie] Douglass, as soon as he heard that the call was coming here and why, Officer Douglass instructed us to evacuate the classrooms in the west end of first floor to the auditorium to get everyone out of the area,” assistant principal Angie Messer said. “[West E-Hall] was the only part of the building where the odor was picked up by people. The rest of the building had no odor and no danger, so there was no need to evacuate those rooms.”

Firemen then went through the building with a carbon monoxide detector.

“I just think once all the agencies got here,” Messer said, “I think it was a cooperative effort by the fire department and Kansas Gas Service to make sure that they double check, triple checked that our building was safe. As administration, [we] had to wait for word from the fire department that it was okay to then dismiss students, so I just think it was a good cooperative activity and luckily ended in finding nothing in the building, and so we were all safe.”

Though there was no carbon monoxide, several faculty members and students began feeling sick while in the presence of the gaseous odor.

“I think I had a little feeling that there was a gassy smell in the building, but I didn’t pay enough attention to it because it happens quite often,” German teacher Elke Lorenze said. “And so I worked in my room for an extended period of time. I mean, I started to get foggy in my head and, you know, being a little just, there’s something wrong … [when allowed back in class], my students were a little bit nervous about it, so we had our fourth hour in the commons, but [for] activity period, we moved back in our room.”

While evacuated to Rezac, several students complained about missing third hour when they weren’t evacuated from the building.

“Maybe come on the intercom and let us know what’s going on, because I don’t like being kept in the dark,” Zafran said.

Though irritated with the lack of information, some students enjoyed their hour of free time.

“I was supposed to go to Calculus,” junior Azumi Asano said. “I was actually okay about [missing] it because band’s my favorite class. We got to stay there for an extra hour.”