In breaking news Wednesday, several students of ages between 11 and 16 have collapsed at the Outwood Academy Ripon School in North Yorkshire, UK. The secondary school has been evacuated and local emergency services are investigating the incident.
Emergency services were called to Outwood Academy School on Clotherholme Road at around 12:30 pm GMT on Wednesday when a group of children all suddenly lost consciousness.
The North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service announced that crews from Ripon and Boroughbridge, as well as hazardous materials specialists and detection teams, had been dispatched to the Ripon school.
A spokesperson for North Yorkshire Police said: “A number of students had collapsed at the school and have been taken to hospital. At this time, the safety of all the students and staff at the school is paramount and officers are working with the fire and ambulance services to establish what has caused the students to collapse.”
Law enforcement sources note that at least 27 pupils have reported sickness and feeling faint or actually collapsed.
The Outwood Academy Ripon School is working with fire and ambulance services to try and determine what caused the incident.
The school currently has 635 pupils aged between 11 and 18 enrolled, and is part of the Ripon Schools, 15 primary and secondary academies across Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.
The Outwood Academy Ripon declined to speak to the media about the incident at this time.
The fainting incident at the Outwood Academy Ripon School in the UK seems to have been resolved, as the students have all returned to class. Authorities have not identified any reason for the mass fainting spell by the students, but have ruled out chemicals or hazardous gases.
UPDATE 12:43PM EST – Outwood Academy sent the following statement to ValueWalk via email:
PRESS STATEMENT
OUTWOOD GRANGE ACADEMIES TRUST – Wednesday, 11 November 2015
OUTWOOD ACADEMY RIPON
A spokesperson for Outwood Grange Academies Trust has confirmed that, “This morning 4 students fainted during the remembrance service assembly at Outwood Academy Ripon.
One of these students bumped their head when they fainted and was taken to the local walk in minor incident centre in Ripon as a precaution.
Following the assembly, a further 20 students presented themselves during the course of the morning complaining of feeling faint and dizzy. At this point the Academy, again as a precaution, called an ambulance.
The ambulance service took the decision to escalate the matter as there were more than 3 potential causalities, as is their normal procedure, and the Police and Fire Service attended the site.
The emergency services have undertaken tests on the site and have quickly established that there was no chemicals or hazardous gases were present.
A total of 40 students were treated on site, however, all were able to be released back to their lessons, or at the end of the school day.
We thank the emergency services for their speedy response in attending the academy site and making the safety of our students and staff paramount.
We also thank parents, carers and the community for giving the academy the space and time to deal with this matter and know that they would always expect us to follow the instruction of the emergency services until we are satisfied that their children are not at risk.
The academy will be open as normal tomorrow.”
END
