The fire alarm sounded at Sage Hill School around 10:04 a.m Oct. 1. Students, teachers and staff gathered on Ramer Field as Newport Beach Fire Dept. arrived on scene. All were dismissed back to class at around 10:20 a.m. No injuries were reported.

The alarm was pulled because of smoke generated from the cutting of a set for Aida in the studio. A metal saw produced smoke as it hit wood.

“Initially we couldn’t tell where the smoke was coming from we and from the standpoint of being safe rather than sorry…the fire alarm was pulled,” explained Chief Operating Officer Diane Shank. “We found out that it had been taken care of very quickly and it was still just generating smoke.”

Although the smoke was not enough to trigger the fire alarm, it alerted those in the arts building.

“I smelled something when I was walking in front of Trainer Meaghan’s (Beaudoin’s) room,” said junior Leila Raschti, “No one knew what it was.”

But all in all, the students’ and faculty’s responses to the alarm were quick and cautious, a commendable reaction to an unexpected interruption.

“[W]ithin 10 minutes we had people out there, we had students lined up, we took role and we knew who wasn’t there,” Shank said. “And that’s the main thing we want to do when there’s an emergency…to make sure we’ve got a system in place that can account for where people are.”

As students and teachers returned to class, the school investigated what happened, if there was anything that could have done differently and the response.

“Those are the three criteria we always check on, and all three were okay,” Shank said, commending the response of the school as a whole. “When you smell smoke and you don’t see it and you don’t feel it, you don’t want to be in a situation where it can bubble up on you.”