Last Friday, hundreds of students stood in the mud and the rain on the soccer field. The fire alarms had gone off, driving everyone outside to be soaked in the rain shower. This was an inopportune time for a drill, which concerned students in the building. Fortunately, the school was not on fire.

Sophomore Estelle Ryhal said that “all the teachers looked surprised, and it was raining, so it might be a big deal.”

The incident, however, was reportedly caused by a faulty smoke detector that had activated the alarms rather than a true emergency. An announcement was made later in first period telling the school that a smoke detector in the weights room had caused the alarms to trigger. This announcement also informed the school that they should disregard any other alarms throughout the day.

The alarms were set off again during Panther Plus. Another announcement confirmed that the days’ fire alarms were not caused by a student prankster, as some surmised, but a technical error with the alarm system. All in all, the morning’s events were unexpected and wetter than the student body expected, but it is fortuitous that our unplanned fire drill was nothing more than a malfunction.