The fire alarm system in the Iowa state capitol in Des Moines put a halt to Governor Kim Reynolds' weekly news conference. It stopped a public hearing in the old Iowa Supreme Court chambers on budget cuts. And it sent people scrambling to find out where the fire was.
Turns out, the alarm was triggered by smoke detectors in the capitol basement. Shortly after the alarms sounded and people started to evacuate, staff at the capitol determined that smoke detectors went off in the basement of the capitol in the area of the legislative dining hall.
Noone knows if it was an errant bag of microwave popcorn or a smoldering entree that caused the alarms to go off.
Fortunately, both the Iowa House and Iowa Senate scheduled most of their business for later in the day.