At around 9:15 a.m. today, school administrators evacuated the Agricultural Building at W.B. Saul when a carbon monoxide alarm sounded in the building. The Ag is home to horticulture, animal science, food science, natural resource management, Spanish, English, history, and journalism classes, as well as a variety of shops and offices. 

“We immediately evacuated about 100 students and staff from the building and alerted the fire department and Philadelphia Gas Works,” Principal Howell stated in a letter to the Saul High School Community, sent this afternoon. 

Evacuated students and teachers looked on as sirens grew louder and vehicles from the Philadelphia Fire Department arrived on campus. 

Senior horticulture major Jasir Hand was one of over 100 students who had their advisories relocated to the multipurpose room (MPR), a room used for assemblies, lunch, and, in today’s case, emergencies. 

“It won’t affect my class time until I have to go to third and fourth block,” Hand said, “but it will affect my Ag class, which is during fourth block, so we may have to stay in [the MPR] during that.”

After advisory, students with classes regularly rostered in the Ag were sent to new locations in the Academic building for second block while classrooms were being inspected. 

“By 10:45 a.m., we received the all-clear and the AG building was reopened, and the school resumed all normal programming,” Howell said. “There were no injuries reported.”