School Resource Officers and firefighters responded to an alarm at the Habersham Ninth Grade Academy Thursday morning. (Daniel Purcell/Now Habersham)
Students at Habersham’s Ninth Grady Academy got a brief break from class this morning when they were evacuated for, what turned out to be, a false alarm.
Demorest Fire Capt. Robert Stein says firefighters from Stations 5 and 14 responded to the call at 11:15 a.m. When they arrived at the school in Mt. Airy students were already outside the building.
Capt. Stein says the alarm system indicated there was smoke in one of the heat returns. “We searched and found nothing,” he says.
Firefighters detected a smell coming from a laboratory where students had been heating Coke cans as part of a steam engine experiment. Stein says that may have set off the alarm.
“It took about an hour (to search the school),” he says. “We wanted to make sure everything was safe before we let the kids go back in.” Once they got the all clear, students returned to class around 12:23 p.m.
