Updated as of 9:23 p.m. on May 6 to include video.
Clohan Dining Hall was closed on Sunday due to a potential gas leak. No leak was found after an investigation by Campus Police, Piedmont Natural Gas, Elon Facilities Management and the Elon Fire Department.
"There definitely was some smell of gas, but overall, it doesn't appear there was actually a leak or a problem mechanically," Joe LeMire, chief of Campus Safety & Police, said.
Multiple fire trucks and police cars were seen at Clohan around 3:30 p.m. on Sunday, along with a maintenance worker equipped with a gas leak detector from Piedmont Natural Gas. Out of precaution, Clohan remained closed for the entirety of Sunday and reopened on Monday.
Sophomore Maggie Blakeney did not receive the first E-Alert, despite normally receiving them.
“I normally get the text and the email, both of them, but I didn't get either for this announcement,” Blakeney said. “It was a surprise to me to realize that they were actually closed today without explanation.”
Chief LeMire explained that the E-Alert was intended for all students, faculty and staff, but accidentally was only sent to members of the RAVE Guardian Safety App group, reaching about 1,800 people instead of the intended 8,900. This was the first occurrence LeMire could recall where the wrong group was selected for an incident and not a test.
LeMire said he plans to implement further training within the emergency response team for sending out E-Alerts as well as contacting the company where messages are sent through to redesign the Elon system for simplicity.
"We have to do a combination of timely versus quality and make sure that what we send out is correct. And that's something that we'll build into our training and a couple other ideas we have for some other technology that we operate, to make sure that if we have a real major incident that we are sending the stuff out correctly," LeMire said.