A for-real evacuation of the Greenwood School took place Friday morning, and everything ran so smoothly that the incident barely got noticed. That has Principal Dennis Winn singing the praises of students, faculty, school custodian Betty O’Leary, parents, and all “the team Greenwood.”

O’Leary didn’t wait a moment when she smelled natural gas about 10 a.m. She called the Warwick Fire Department and National Grid, and then alerted Winn.

Winn said, within a minute of the announcement to evacuate, classes were orderly filing out of the school and assembling at a pre-assigned location in the schoolyard.

But, as it turned out, that location happened to be within an area where gas had been smelled earlier in the week.

School PTA President and Ward 7 Councilwoman-elect Kathleen Usler, on the scene before the firefighters, was impressed by the orderly way the students left the school. With the arrival of firefighters, it became apparent that the 298 or so students had to be relocated from the schoolyard to the yards of homes on the opposite side of the street.

The students were told they needed to move and, in Winn’s words, moved “like one person” across the street.

“They did it so perfectly and orderly,” Winn said. “I have to give the staff credit, and the students who listened to their teachers.”

Winn said in his 41 years as an educator, he has never seen anything like it. Winn said the students were told gas had been detected and were told why they were being evacuated. One girl told him she was “scared,” to whom Winn said everything would be all right, now that they were outside. As a means of reassuring the students who were sitting on lawns facing the school, Winn said, “We’re all out for one big picnic, but we don’t have any food.”

He explained a gas odor was detected outside the school last Tuesday and a National Grid crew declared the school safe.

As students and faculty left the building quickly, they didn’t have their coats. Winn said it was a bit chilly but, fortunately, it wasn’t raining. He said a National Grid crew responded quickly.

A spokesman for the company said a crew was at the school at about 11 and determined a faulty regulator, which is outside the school, was identified as the source of the odor. It was repaired.

Students and faculty were given the “all clear” to return to class within 40 minutes of the evacuation.

“It was a great job,” he said.