BROOKINGS — A gas leak resulted in the brief evacuation of Brookings High School on Tuesday morning. 

“I received a call from the head custodian that there was an odor — a gas odor in that FCCLA (Family, Career, and Community Leaders of America) room, which would be on the southwest side of the high school,” Keith Fodness, director of facilities for the Brookings School District, said. “I just very simply said, ‘Hey, get Northwestern Energy service out’ — you know, they have their leak detectors. Standard procedure when you call Northwestern to check on a leak is that you evacuate your building. So, the fire department was involved. There weren’t like trucks and stuff dispatched, but the fire chief was there. Northwestern came out, they found one of the gas appliances in that room had a faulty pilot. So the gas supply to that machine was shut off and that machine will be repaired.”

As a safety precaution, the entire building was evacuated for approximately twenty minutes.

“Kids were outside the building from approximately 9:10 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. All the students, everybody in the building was removed from the building,” Fodness said. “Ultimately yeah, if you detect a leak you have to investigate. Procedures were followed, no one was in danger and everything is good.”

He said the evacuation and investigation were both handled efficiently.

“That (the evacuation order) comes basically from, you know, Northwestern — and that’s just part of their procedure. The administration at the high school took care of the administration of the evacuation,” Fodness said. “When you call for a leak, standard procedure is you clear your building. Representatives from Northwestern and the fire department are involved, and they did their job — they did it really quick — and the administration at the high school handled it. Everything went as it should.”

Email Jay Roe at jroe@brookingsregister.com.