Stuyvesant High School was evacuated at approximately 11:45 a.m. on Friday, November 13 after a plastic hand towel dispenser in the third floor boys’ bathroom was set on fire.

Although smoke from the fire set off the alarm, an announcement was made over the loudspeaker shortly after to ignore the bells.

“At first, no one left the building even though we were aware that there was a fire. When the Fire Department arrived, they told [Assistant Principal Organization Randi] Damesek that she was to evacuate the building,” Principal Stanley Teitel said. Teitel, however, was not in the building when the fire occurred because he was visiting Yale University with juniors on the college trip.

According to an article published on The New York Times Web site on Friday, November 13, “Fire Forces Evacuation of Stuyvesant High School”, the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) received an emergency call at 11:42 a.m. and sent 12 trucks and 60 firefighters, the minimum number required for any kind of fire, to Stuyvesant. The fire was under control by 11:59 a.m., and no one was injured.

Students missed the end of 5th period along with the entirety 6th period. They were let back into the school before the beginning of 7th period, at around 12:30 p.m. The third floor remained crowded with firefighters, so seventh and eighth period classes on the third floor met in the theater. The custodians have put out fires in the past, but the FDNY was called because they felt they could not handle this one. Because of the amount of black smoke caused by the burning plastic, authorities were mandated to evacuate the building. Some smoke was present in the hallway.

Since the evacuation, there have been several more fires on various floors. All of them, however, were extinguished immediately and did not require evacuation. According to Teitel, the administration is still investigating who started the fires and cannot disclose further information regarding any of them.

As a result of the evacuation, a revised fire evacuation plan was issued to all teachers. The plan specified instructions and new exit routes for teachers with both instructional and non-instructional periods. Teachers who are not teaching that period are required to assist with crowd control in hallways and staircases. The purpose of revising the schedule was to better organize future evacuations.

Students expressed generally negative views about the evacuation.

“It’s less organized than all the drills have ever been,” senior Jenny Dai said. “It took forever to get downstairs with [social studies teacher Josina] Dunkel yelling at us.”

Sophomore Liam Downs-Tepper agreed. “It didn’t seem particularly well-organized,” he said. “It was a bit chaotic; teachers were telling us to shut up and get moving, [and] it just wasn’t so friendly of them. I didn’t feel the love. I just felt the urgency and the fire at my back.”

English teacher Colette Brown, however, found the evacuation fairly well-ordered. “Considering the number of students you have, everyone’s very well-behaved,” she said. “People are hungry and cranky and trying to be as patient as they can.”

This article was updated on November 20, 2009.