Many New Haven schools were evacuated during the earthquake

Before receiving emergency management guidance to shelter in place, at least three schools received directions from an assistant superintendent to evacuate during the earthquake that struck last Friday morning.

Ariella Lopez 1:31 AM, April 9, 2024

Staff reporter

Zoe Berg, Senior Photographer

Students were evacuated from at least three New Haven public schools Friday morning during the earthquake.

At about 10:20 a.m. Friday, buildings shook throughout New Haven after a 4.8 magnitude earthquake struck northern New Jersey. During the brief earthquake, an assistant superintendent directed some New Haven schools to evacuate, according to New Haven Public Schools spokesman Justin Harmon. School officials sounded fire alarms to carry out evacuations, prompting firefighters to head to the scene. Daniel Coughlin, assistant chief of operations for the New Haven Fire Department, said the department received fire alarm notifications from Ross Woodward Magnet School, Clinton Avenue School and John C. Daniels School.

On Friday, outgoing Emergency Management Director Rick Fontana told the News he had heard about six schools in New Haven being evacuated. Harmon, who declined to name the assistant superintendent who issued the directive, said “several” schools had been evacuated but he would not confirm which ones.

“This was a very unusual circumstance,” Harmon said. “I think the fact that there was an earthquake led to some responses that were well-intentioned but suboptimal.”

Shortly after evacuating to pre-designated evacuation sites, the schools received directives from the city's Department of Emergency Management to shelter in place. The schools then returned to their buildings “within minutes,” Harmon said.

Regina Rush Kettle, New Haven's chief administrative officer, who runs the Emergency Management Division, did not respond to requests for comment.

Fontana, West Haven's director of emergency management who previously served as New Haven's director of emergency management for more than a decade, said the correct emergency management protocol for Friday's quake was to stay inside, where buildings provide a level of protection.

“The evacuation was a directive in an attempt to quickly respond to a situation that was not fully understood at the time,” Harmon said. “The best instruction, we were told, is to shelter people where they are, so we got that right.”

While NHPS parents were notified of the city's shelter-in-place directive, Harmon said parents at evacuated schools were not notified that their children had left the buildings.

Harmon said specific school departments will hold discussions and debriefs to ensure all school officials are up to speed on proper emergency protocols. He stressed that officials setting off a fire alarm to announce an evacuation when there was no fire was “exactly the wrong thing to do” because it sent a misleading signal to the Emergency Management Department.

“Sounding fire alarms is not the way to conduct a drill or evacuate a building in a situation that does not constitute a fire,” Harmon said.

According to Coughlin, there was an increase in the number of fire alarms activated citywide during the earthquake. While some, such as those at schools, may have been pulled out in the confusion due to an emergency, Coughlin believes some may be accidental, because weather emergencies can “destabilize” the system.

Because of the high alert level, the fire department responded to each school call with one vehicle and four firefighters – a single-engine response. Coughlin estimated it would take firefighters at most 20 minutes to assess the scene, reset the alarm system and allow the schools to reoccupy their buildings.

Rush-Kettle has served as New Haven's director of emergency management since Fontana stepped down in January, while the city searches for a replacement. According to Coughlin, Rush-Kettle did not consider it necessary to activate the New Haven Emergency Operations Center to respond to Friday's earthquake.

Coughlin said emergency department meetings since Friday have not focused on school evacuations. He praised school leaders for their quick response despite the confusion.

“It's great that they did what they were supposed to do and it worked,” Coughlin said. “Every emergency is different, so whatever a school provides for its emergency plan is its own emergency plan.”

He explained that city emergency departments do not dictate individual schools' emergency plans.

No injuries or serious structural damage were reported from the quake in New Haven, Coughlin said.

As cities across the state reacted to the quake, New Haven schools weren't the only ones considering evacuating. Hours after the quake, a middle school in Greenwich evacuated students to a nearby high school after an inspection of the school's facilities revealed new cracks.

The NHPS executive team includes four assistant superintendents.

Ariella Lopez

Ariella Lopez covers City Hall and city politics. Originally from New York City, she is a first-year at Branford College.

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