Yesterday one of my roommates knocked on my door. I opened. «Is there a fire in here?» he asked. I looked around, seeing no sign of a fire he stepped out of the doorway and I saw another guy. He'd come upstairs to the appartment to tell us the fire alarm control cabinet on the first floor said there was something wrong with one of our our fire alarm. Ema and I went downstairs with him and found it making a piercing (although not too loud) sound, a signal called «Pre- warning» glowing, and it said it was the alarm in the living room on the fifth floor, to the north that caused it.
Hoping it wouldn't cause the alarm to go off in the middle of the night, we called the security people telling them about it. The rest of the afternoon people kept coming up to tell us the thing was beeping downstairs, very nice of them but since we already knew, we left a note saying so. And hoped someone would come and stop it. We're not allowed to shut it off ourselves since we wouldn't know how to reset it and then it kinda sucks if a fire did start.
11:50pm
Dooooaaadooooaaadooooaaadooooaaa
I had got the sweater over my head, my pants off, ready to put on my pajamas. I looked up at the alarm, as I always do, hoping for a second it might stop. It didn't. Clothes back on, glasses off, contacts on, then downstairs. I found my three roommates on the first floor, next to the fire alarm control cabinet. Please don't tell me our thing caused this...
Dooooaaadooooaaadooooaaadooooaaa
I think pretty much everyone in the building had gone downstairs this time – when we first moved in the alarm went off on a weekly (sometimes daily) basis and people stopped taking it seriously. But now it's been almost two years, and a lot of the people who lived here back then have moved out, and those living here now seem to do what they're supposed to do.
Luckily it wasn't our alarm that dragged them out of bed or a lover's arms, it was a room on the first floor. The fire department only sent one car and 3 or so guys this time, they stopped the alarm and it was quiet for a minute. Then it started back up. One of my roommates told them about the «Pre-warning» that was still there, and we went back upstairs. I went to bed. Thought the alarm would stop.
Dooooaaadooooaaadooooaaadooooaaa
It didn't.
Back out of bed, firemen had been looking at our alarm too, they left and we all sat down. Waiting. The thing with this alarm system is the alarm will stop for a few seconds, it will be perfectly quiet. At least where we're sitting. Then it'll start again on the floor below us. Three dooooaaas later it starts in the hallway. Three more, it's in our rooms. Another three and it reaches the living room Then it stops. And starts over. It does this for anything between 5 and 55 minutes. Last night was a long one.
Quiet sounds good when it's over.
Nobody's dying in this building.
Oh gosh.. if I stayed there, I think i would've decided to make the bathtub my bed. I'd fill it up with water and should there be real fire, burning to death would be the last thing on my mind.
ReplyDeleteBut then again... I would most probably die from hypothermia first. Hehehe... I'm really not making any sense huh? lol. Must be the lamb chops i had for dinner =)
That's an idea - I could ask them to come instal a tub in my room. The bathroom isn't big enough.
ReplyDeleteOf course, these are people who, two years after we moved in, are still unable to find the missing key for the living room window.
Or fix the fire escape door downstairs. I tried it yesterday like the janitor asked me to. If it was a real fire, we'd all die.
Then again, as the janitor said; "there's not too much that can actually catch fire in this building". Even our curtains are said to be nonflammable.