Two high school kids burned in lab

accident
By Lorena Mongelli, Natasha Velez and Laura Italiano

January 2, 2014 | 10:59am Modal Trigger

The Beacon School at 227 West 61st St. Inset: Science teacher Anna
PooleKristy Leibowitz, Facebook

Two 10th-graders at Manhattan’s award-winning Beacon School were injured

Thursday morning when a routine lab experiment went horribly awry, leaving
one boy with serious burns.

Chemistry teacher Anna Poole had hoped to treat her students to a “fun”
demonstration of the rainbow of flames that results from burning four kinds of
nitrates in separate crucibles, students and law-enforcement told The Post.
But a volatile buildup of methyl alcohol fumes in the Upper West Side school’s
third-floor chemistry lab ignited into a fireball that sped across a countertop
and engulfed sophomore Alonzo Yanes, 16.

Modal Trigger Alonzo YanesKristy Leibowitz

“Help me! Help me!” screamed Yanes, who stood only a couple of feet away
from the crucibles, according to witnesses. None of the students was wearing
goggles.

Yanes dropped to the floor and tried to roll, but precious seconds ticked by
until a fire extinguisher and then a blanket were used to extinguish the flames.

“His skin — a lot of it was melted and scabbed,” said a classmate, Jeremy
Reynoso, 15.

“He was on fire for a good minute,” Reynoso said. “I saw his ear was melting.
The skin was peeling. His face was red. Afterward, he wasn’t talking or
moving.”

Yanes suffered second- and third-degree burns to his head and neck, while
another student, Julia Saltonstall, 16, suffered less severe burns to her neck,
head and arm, said Deputy Fire Chief Anthony Devita.

The boy remained Thursday night in Cornell Medical Center’s burn unit.
“The teacher was reportedly demonstrating how certain chemicals react to
others, which you do expect in a science class,” Devita said.

Modal Trigger Ahmadou GueyeKristy Leibowitz

Poole, who also has taught at Bronx HS of Science, had “wanted to do
something fun,” Reynoso recalled.

“It was just an accident on the teacher’s part. I’m assuming the experiment
went wrong.”

He went on, “She had four crucibles set on the table, and she lit them up.
There were four different- color fires — red, purple, green and yellow.

“Then they all stopped burning and she lit them up again. I’m not sure if she
used a lighter fluid.”
A law-enforcement source confirmed that methanol, or methyl alcohol,
appears to have caused the experiment to go out of control.

“Everybody froze, and I just ran and I got the fire extinguisher. I tried to press
it, but the pin was in it,” Ahmadou Gueye, 15, told The Post. “Then I gave it to
the teacher and she used it.”

Another chemistry teacher, Michael Shum, rushed in and threw a blanket on

the writhing student. “And that really put out the fire,” said Reynoso.
FILED UNDER BEACON SCHOOL , STUDENTS , UPPER WEST SIDE