A Chemical Reaction To Get You Fired

During my senior year of high school, the last day of classes before Christmas break was interrupted by a fire alarm. We all evacuated, thinking at first that it was just a drill, but quickly realizing that the first floor of the building was filling with smoke. There was so much that it started setting off people’s asthma.

Still, everyone was able to evacuate safely and there was no visible fire, so no one was worried. We just enjoyed the impromptu break from classes and being able to be outside, since it was nice weather, despite being late December.

We were outside for quite a while, while the fire department cleared out the smoke–so long that we ended up missing three periods. The whole time, we were talking about what was going on, debating on how the fire could have started.

After they gave us the all-clear and we returned inside, we were informed of what happened. The fire had started in the chemistry lab–by the chemistry teacher, who thought it would be a good idea to throw hot, burning embers into a trash can full of paper towels.