Clackamas Community College’s Harmony West campus had to be evacuated on June 4 as a result of a gas leak in the building.

“This morning I came to math lab upstairs and I didn’t know if it was a gas leak but it definitely smelled bad,” said Amanda Williams, a CCC student attending classes in the building. “Around noon we had the fire alarm go off and someone told us we had to evacuate the premises and they told us to go to Harmony East and we did.”

About 30 minutes later, she said, one of the security officers told her that we needed to quickly go back to the Harmony West building and grab her stuff.

Classes that were in session were soon cancelled.

Campus safety manager Peter Kandratieff said, “ It turned out to be a natural gas leak from somewhere in the building. Northwest Natural gas came out and found the leak and fixed the problem. It was probably an hour and a half or two hours that the building was evacuated and during that time it was inspected. Once that was fixed we allowed people back into the building.”

According to Public Information Officer Lori Hall, “Campus safety started evacuating Harmony West campus around 11:30 a.m. College safety determined to call the fire department to make sure that there was no risk to our staff and students in the building.” Once the building was safe, classes scheduled after 1 p.m. resumed at normal times.