On May 4, a fire alarm went off at 7:37 a.m., causing students and staff to evacuate the building once again.

In the past two-and-a-half months, West Chicago Community High School has experienced six fire alarms. This most recent alarm was student-related, however.

“Someone was smoking near a smoke detector,” the Director of Deans, Veronica Jimenez-Winton, said via email.

Just a few days prior, on May 1, students and staff evacuated during the tenth period. The cause of this alarm stemmed from an unexpected source: a PE class. 

“In the field house, a student kicked a ball and it hit a very dusty wall that caused dust to form around the smoke detector. The smoke detector took the dust as smoke and went off,” Jimenez-Winton wrote via email.

The evacuations are just two of four to occur this semester. Here are the previous months’ alarms and reasons:

March: two alarms; one was due to a faulty sensor, and the other was caused by a glitch in the mechanical area. on the second floor.

April: two alarms; one was set off by a nearby popcorn machine and the other a faulty alarm.

As previously reported, most students do not know why the fire alarms have gone off, and have questioned what happened. However, many expressed they were nonplussed about the number of alarms.

“I’m the type of person that is of the mindset that the fire alarms going off are actually nice because it gives me a mental break in the middle of class wish they happened more often,” sophomore Lukas Hernandez said.