At 8:15 a.m. on March 25, a minute before classes began, the fire alarm went off, sending over 2,000 Lafayette students and staff members out into the rain.

The alarm went off due to a low water sensor in the sprinkler system in a classroom. Assistant Principal Matt Dieckhaus is in charge of all Lafayette emergency planning.

“A sprinkler system is full of water, with the faucets shut off. The pipes are full of water with no pressure on them, so when they go off, gravity pulls the water down,” Dieckhaus said.

Fire officials had to come to the school to inspect the classroom and the main room to ensure there were no leaks.

“We don’t know why it triggered,” Dieckhaus said. “It could have just been a false reading.”

Students huddled under umbrellas and hopped into cars to try to stay dry. There were around eight buses still in the parking lot, so many students on the east side of the school were herded on board to keep warm.

Junior Hannah Veenstra was on one of the buses.

“We had to sit there for, like, 20 minutes. All the kids were going crazy,” she said.

Once the fire officials approved the school for admittance, students and staff filed in to begin the school day. 

“Because the alarm went off before classes began, attendence hadn’t be taken, so we have no way of knowing if students left campus,” Dieckhaus said.

“We thought it went extremely well. We were out of the school in 4 minutes and 50 seconds. The hard part of it was the rain,”  he said.