By Aman Chabra, Local News 8 Reporter

BLACKFOOT - It was a morning of delays and frustration Wednesday for students at Blackfoot High School.

At around 9:00 Tuesday morning, a pipe above the school's sophomore hall sprang a leak, and poured gallons of hot water through the ceiling tiles and onto the floor.

With the water came a considerable amount of steam, which triggered the fire alarm.

"At first we thought someone had pulled the fire alarm," said Assistant Principal Tom Harrington.

After quickly figuring out that wasn't the case, Harrington and other faculty members decided the safest course of action was to evacuate the students and treat the situation much like a fire drill.

Students spent over an hour in the school's auditorium on the other side of campus.

The sophomore hallway is the main science wing of the school, and the section where the leak was found was blocked off by caution tape while work crews labored to fix the problem. 

As a result students weren't able to return to class to retrieve their belongings.

"It's two weeks before finals and we were supposed to be working on our review for it and we weren't able to do that," said ninth grader Jordan Miller.

Other students were also inconvenienced by the delay which lasted more than an hour and a half.

"I have my physics class up there in that wing, and we were supposed to be working on catapults for the pumpkin chuck competition at ISU and we didn't get to do that, so we have a lot of work to catch up on because the competition is in a couple weeks," said senior Nikki Ross.

Maintenance crews from the school district worked tirelessly throughout the morning Wednesday replacing the many ceiling tiles damaged by the leak.  One thing they were unable to fix, however, was the warping caused to the hallway floor by the excessive amount of hot water.

Despite the damage and the delay in school proceedings, officials say the situation was handled well.

"The students followed their teachers out, and had to leave their things behind, but I just told them to tell their teachers they were in the science wing, and their teachers would understand," said Asst. Principal Harrington.