The ground split beneath Pinewood’s Upper Campus on the afternoon of Wednesday, March 11th, as students clutched their desks during what a local United States Geological Survey official later confirmed was a category 5 Sharknado, followed by a tsunami.
Within seconds, classrooms descended into pure chaos. Sharks landed on teachers, chairs scraped across the floor, and several iPads became lunch for baby sharks. At least 67 students were “emotionally shaken.” In the Junior High Quad, students watched in horror as English teacher Kim Wetzel’s elbow and big toe were viciously gnawed by a gigantic hammerhead.
The sharknado struck at approximately 2:22 p.m. during an eighth-grade science lesson on unnatural disasters. Junior high science teacher Elaina Tyson, who was mid-lecture, was unfazed.
“Please remain calm,” Tyson said, as 7th graders kicked a shark off the front table and dodged one that crashed through the ceiling. “This will be on your unit test.”
She then promptly encouraged students to continue taking notes. Moments later, panic escalated when multiple students received tsunami alerts on their phones, warning of a 17-foot wave that could potentially impact Pinewood. The alerts triggered immediate confusion among students. Freshman Arya Agarwal prepared for the worst-case scenario.
“I was just eating Taco Bell during my free period and scrolling on TikTok when all of a sudden I got an alert that scared the living daylights out of me,” Agarwal said. “In preparation for the worst-case scenario, I grabbed my Baja Blast and headed for high ground.”
As the wave approached Upper Campus, fear spread among students and faculty. The waves surged into the classrooms surrounding the Junior High Quad, flooding the turf with ocean water, fish corpses, and even more sharks. While the extent of the flooding remains unclear, the wave was unexpectedly powerful, prompting students to throw octopuses at some tiger sharks on the basketball court as they ran away.
English teacher Holly Coty, always prepared for an emergency, grabbed a kayak she had stowed behind the school and began spearing jellyfish to protect students from stings.
“One second she was standing and handing us our reading checks, and the next she was grabbing the sharks by the mouth and splitting them open,” freshman Sam Friedland said. “It was all so overwhelming. At least our reading checks got soaked.”
In the aftermath of the incident, multiple classrooms remain in disarray, with shark corpses littering the football field and human body parts hanging from the roof. There are multiple classrooms with puddles of anchovies swimming around. Cleanup efforts are ongoing, though a full recovery timeline has not yet been announced. Wetzel is still looking for her toe.
“There are so many big toes lying on the ground, and I just can’t tell which is mine,” Wetzel said. “It’s going to take some time to figure it all out.”
