Students flock to the football field during a fire alarm during fifth period Wednesday. This alarm was the third in three weeks to occur at Palo Alto High School.

– David Lim

Two alarms pulled simultaneously today at the beginning of fifth period on the south side of the big gym at Palo Alto High School disrupted just under 30 minutes of instruction, according to Assistant Principal Jerry Berkson.

“It was kind of like a one-two-three go,” Berkson said. “It was probably two friends.”

The incident marks the third time in three weeks that a fire alarm was triggered unnecessarily. Of the three alarms, two were pulled and one was a malfunction, according to Berkson.

Pulling a fire alarm with no cause for emergency is a felony and is punishable by law.

Students expressed mixed feelings about the frequency of fire alarms at Paly.

“I feel like we have lots of frequent fire alarms and I’m not really sure what the cause is,” senior Emily Fu said. “We were supposed to take a test today in Spanish. I think we kind of groaned but some people were pretty happy about the disruption [because] we didn’t have to take the test.”