Students and staff returned to Plum Middle School about an hour after an odor caused school and district officials to divert its students to another building this morning, district Superintendent Rick Walsh said.
What initially was described as a faint natural gas odor in a classroom was detected about 7:50 a.m., before the arrival of the school’s roughly 540 seventh and eighth grade students.
“It was determined that the odor was coming from a sewer pipe located outside the classroom,” Walsh said.
No injuries were reported.
Firefighters were at the school by 8 a.m., Walsh said.
Middle school faculty and staff were evacuated. While firefighters and other officials were inspecting the school, the arriving middle school students were taken directly to Holiday Park Intermediate School, which is a short distance away on the same campus.
“The fire departments did a thorough inspection of the building, and there was no indication of any natural gas leak,” Walsh said. “We also had Peoples Gas on scene, and we asked them to confirm. Peoples Gas did a thorough inspection of the building and came to the same conclusions.”
The smell was not related to the Peoples Natural Gas system, spokesman Nicholas Paradise said.
No work was being done related to the sewage pipe, Walsh said. The cause of the odor was being investigated.
Walsh said he addressed middle school students, faculty and staff at Holiday Park before they walked back to their school around 8:45 a.m.
“Our No. 1 priority is making sure that everybody is safe in our buildings,” he said. “There’s nothing more important to us than the safety of our children, faculty and staff.”
