It was a calm day at WT Woodson High School. Students anticipated the end of the quarter, combined with a four-day weekend and Halloween on a Saturday.
They heard the EMT sirens and things changed as students evacuated to the football stadium where the Cavaliers were supposed to play the Spartans that night.
“The fire trucks and helicopters came to the school, and there was a weird feeling spreading through the students,” said Woodson sophomore Christian Schwien.
After a couple hours some students started to be released to parents, and that was when Schwien found out the horrible news.
“[I] found out that [my classmate] Nick was slightly burned trying to care for his classmates,” said Schwien. “Another friend of mine, Ryan, tried to put out the flames on another classmate and [luckily] didn’t get injured.”
WS Chemistry teacher Steve Fox was stunned, in his 11 years teaching chemistry he has never witnessed an occurrence like this.
“You hear about accidents like this happening in college labs because they use flames [much more often], but rarely in high schools,” said Fox. “Though the teacher was a veteran, this event was a combination of a freak accident and teacher error.”
Fox disclosed what he knew of the details surrounding the accidentt.
“The teacher was using methanol, which is highly flammable, over an open flame,” said Fox. “They were doing a lab where they change the color of the flame by introducing different substances, and using the methanol lead to an explosion.”
Six Woodson students and the teacher who was performing the lab were burned, some seriously.
Fox believes that changing the procedure would have made the lab much safer, even in the responsible hands of veteran teachers.
“I’ve done demos [of the same lab] where I pour isopropyl alcohol on the counter and then light that on fire,” said Fox. “Using isopropyl alcohol over methanol would have been better and safer.”
Because of what happened at Woodson, FCPS now prohibits its schools from using open flames until all science teachers in the school system take a refresher on lab procedure.
Both students and teachers alike hope they can return to using flames in labs.
“[In my opinion] the County shouldn’t be prohibiting open-flame labs because that’s a big part of learning the concepts of chemistry,” said WS junior Javier Michael.
The Woodson tragedy also has our science teachers think twice about the curriculum.
“[This incident] will really make teachers, even us here at WS who have been doing this for a long time, carefully consider how and what experiments they’re going to do,” said Fox.
Though it requires extra work, Fox recognizes that this training will help make FCPS a safer place.
Woodson has had the support of other FCPS schools.
When students returned to the stadium for the Woodson vs. WS football game, they recognized an extra, special sign in front of the WS fan section.
“Everyone saw and really appreciated the sign on the WS side of the bleachers for the football game,” said Schwien.