The James Logan Courier

Courier Staff Report

A mysterious, unidentified odor caused the Union City Fire Department to order the evacuation of some rooms in the 400s area for about 40 minutes Thursday.

"We evacuated the back 400's due to a strong smell of gas," said House Principal Jesus Varela, in an email.
According to Principal Don Montoya, a Logan Campus Security Technician noticed the odor, which was described as smelling something like a gas leak, burning electrical equipment or overheated car brakes, and radioed his concern about the odor to Logan's on-campus police officers. That radio conversation was overheard by the Union City fire department, the chief of which happened to be near campus. He investigated, and decided that the classrooms should be evacuated.

"The fire department was dispatched to investigate and they instructed us to evacuate the classrrooms," said Varela.

About ten minutes into second period, Students and staff moved out of the affected classrooms to evacuation areas and waited while specialized chemical sniffing equipment was used to determine that there was no danger of a natural gas explosion.

Students and staff were allowed back into the rooms before the end of the period. "This took about 40 minutes and then the students were allowed to return to classrooms. One lucky classroom got out of quiz," said Varela.

"We just waited," said senior Jerardo Silva, "A dude taught us a card trick."