Students Help Save South Bay High School From Fire

The students said they were just at the right place at the right time

Southwest High School students were coming back from a robotics competition Saturday when they noticed there was a fire coming from an elevator inside the school.

"We came back to school to put back our robot and as we were exiting, we saw the smoke that was coming out of the building," a student named Xavier Balladarez told NBC 7.

An electrical fire had started in the elevator. 

Xavier said one teammate dialed 911 and another pulled a fire alarm and they rushed to safety.

The group said they were just at the right place at the right time. 

"We have a team member from our team that they actually went to a camp training as a firefighter," Xavier said. "So a lot of us are looking into careers as firefighters and implementing engineering to automate systems to make it easier for firefighters to save lives."

"Robotics and the mechanisms that engineering students [use] would be great," Batallion Chief Ballard said. "Anything we can do to enhance our safety and our effectiveness is something we're open to."

There were no reported injuries.

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