All four students injured in a rocket explosion Thursday night at the University of Idaho are out of surgery and recovering.

Dan Ewart, University of Idaho vice president of infrastructure, would not confirm the identities of these students, but said during a press conference Friday morning that three of the students are engineering majors and associated with the university’s branch of the Northwest Organization of Rocket Engineers (NORE).

Grant Thurman, a member of NORE, told the Moscow-Pullman Daily News that both co-presidents of the club were involved in the experiment and explosion. Bailey Lind-Trefts and Daniel Furman were said to be in stable condition by a Gritman Medical Center health supervisor. The other two students have not yet been identified.

Thurman said one co-president igniting the rocket fuel wore a face mask while the other only wore eye protection.

A faculty adviser was present during the event, Ewart said, but he would not confirm the identity of this adviser or whether the individual is associated with NORE.

Sophomore Lennin Rodriguez, a computer science major at UI, said that he arrived on scene when “the fire department [was] spraying down the rocket, which was smoking.” He identified NORE adviser T. Rick Fletcher, UI department of chemistry associate professor, as the only UI faculty member on scene he could make out.

“I only recognized my chem professor from last year,” he said. “So I figured it was school sanctioned.”

In his opening address about the incident at the press conference this morning, Ewert said the students were working on a project which required testing “rocket fuel.” However, he could not confirm the type of rocket fuel used in the experiment.

“Students were a part of a student club that was working on testing rocket fuel designed for model rockets,” Ewart said.

Moscow Police received a report of the explosion at 9:52 p.m. on Thursday, and responded to the parking lot east of the university’s steam plant on Sixth Street, where the explosion occurred.

As of this morning, all police tape was taken down from the scene, but wood debris remains scattered around the parking lot. Moscow Police Chief James Fry Jr. said the area is safe.

Fry said that use of devices which require shooting a projectile or will emit debris into the air has to be regulated and granted permission by the Moscow Police.

Ewert said that the experiment was not intended to have a projectile shot into the air. The university sanctions the club, but this particular experiment is still being investigated.

“The injured individual who was in critical condition was taken out of there first,” Rodriguez said. “Not sure, but I heard something [about] his chest cavity [being] severely injured.”

Junior Scott Jones, chemistry and anthropology major at UI, arrived on scene after hearing the explosion from the sidewalk outside of St. Augustine’s Catholic Center.

“It wasn’t the explosion of a firework, it didn’t have that deep bellow of a mortar or a high pitch of a fire cracker, but it was that sound of destruction,” Jones said, “sort of like the sounds of explosions in videos you see from Syria.”

Jones said he arrived before the police tape was set up and stood about 50-60 feet from the responders behind a metal barrier that borders the parking lot. He said he initially counted three victims and saw around 15-20 personnel working on the victim closest to the smoke cloud.

“There was one guy who could sit up,” Jones said. “He had about an inch or inch-and-a-half gash on his left arm.”

Ewert said that the Energy Plant parking lot and building are safe for students and faculty; class and street closures will not be applied.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated and revised to reflect that Gritman Medical Center was not involved in identifying the co-presidents of NORE or their involvement in the incident.