A kitchen fire triggered the sprinklers in Kemper Hall, damaging at least two suites Monday afternoon.

The grease fire started in a third-floor suite, said Weinberg sophomore Samantha Shanklin, who was on the dorm’s ground floor at the time. A student came downstairs to tell her about the fire.

“She said she couldn’t stop it and she forgot to turn off the stove,” Shanklin said. “I called 911, but the fire alarm already went off.”

The fire began at about 5:45 p.m. and scorched the wall of the suite’s kitchen, said SESP sophomore Takia Gardner.

“We’re working in the mail room and a girl came down, and she said there’s a fire,” Gardner said. “We all went out, and we came back and the ceiling is leaking.”

Water from the sprinklers seeped through to the ground floor, resulting in at least three leaks. One was in the lobby, and the other two were in the community room. Water came from an overhead light socket and a ceiling panel, dripping onto a large-screen TV.

Weinberg junior Qingshuo Wang, who lives across the hall from the location of the fire, said he was leaving the dorm when it started.

“On my way down, a girl from another suite came out and she was freaking out,” Wang said.

He said he wanted to extinguish the flames, but that the alarm was so loud.

“We couldn’t function, so we left, he said. “When we came back in, it smelled funny.”

At about 6:30 p.m., an Evanston Fire Department investigator came to the third floor to take photos of the damage. Maintenance workers cleaned up with industrial-sized vacuum cleaners. They dumped the water into one of the suite’s showers.