“Uh…I think the room is on fire,” a THS junior anxiously exclaimed on Tuesday morning amid the NJGPA testing. As all of the students’ heads instantly whipped away from their computer screens, they saw a frightening cloud of smoke funneling out of the radiator. Teachers, raising their hands to quiet the murmuring, panicked voices, widened their eyes when they caught sight of the foggy haze that began to sink over the classroom.
The incident happened at around 8:25 a.m., only a few minutes after the start of the state testing period. A loud buzzing noise first emerged from the radiator. Students, trying to focus on their English assessments that morning, let out heavy sighs as the buzzing continued to annoy their ears. Teachers in the room quickly took notice of the students’ frustration and politely tried to silence the pesky noise. As no one had yet fully understood the gravity of the situation, what happened next was completely unexpected, and decidedly worse than the irritating hum of the dusty radiator: small puffs of smoke rapidly developed into thick clouds with an unsettling stench that permeated the room.
Severely panicked, the students were told to stay seated as urgent phone calls were made, windows were frantically opened, and the sound of coughs erupted as the smoke continued to spew out. A pungent odor permeated the room, suffocating and nauseating the students trying to focus on their standardized tests. After a few anxious minutes of waiting for the announcement to escape the fogginess, the call came and students were safely evacuated to the hallway. However, the smoke had already spilled into the long halls of the second floor of the school, and as the students were told to quietly line up, red eyes were beginning to water from the persistent exposure.
As the students and teachers then waited for what to do, a figure emerged from the smoke: Mr. Morrison, our hero. In no handbook or Tiger Q is there a protocol for this situation, making the teachers who were monitoring improvise. The principal calmly guided students to the upper level of the library, whose entrance is generally forbidden for students to use. From there, they waited for further instructions on how to resume testing.
This unexpected incident has left us wondering why the fire alarm did not sound. A junior student who was in the classroom said that the fog could have even been monoxide poisoning, a life-threatening emergency. A more reasonable explanation proposed by chemistry teacher Ms. Anat Firnberg suggests that the mysterious fog could have been a “dirty steam” that was darkened from the rust within the radiator instead of smoke, explaining why the smoke alarm was not activated. Whatever the cause, it has left Tenafly juniors leaving that fated room 217 with red eyes and echoing coughs, with which they had to struggle during the challenging state testing
Although the students made it out of testing in one piece, the lingering smell of smoke haunted the rest of their day, a pungent reminder of an extremely interesting incident.
