Dooooaaadooooaaa: part XLVII

Fire alarm. What else is new?

- I'll tell you what else is new. -

Last time the alarm went off I went downstairs, checked where the "fire" was and waited for the firemen to show up. When they did, they waited a bit, then asked - very loudly, and very angrily - "aren't there anyone responsible here?". One guy stepped up and said "I am". I assumed he lived in the apartment where the "fire" started, and that he, for some reason, didn't walk up to the firemen right away, and instead waiting a couple minutes.

The next thing that happened was one of the firemen started yelling at this guy. He was shouting; how could he not tell them right away, what was happening, how were they supposed to know? The person responsible should come right up and tell them. "But I...." was all I heard from the other guy.

I realized by then it was not the time for me to declare that I was the elected representative for the apartment building, that I should be told what's going on. I went back upstairs and after 20 minutes the alarm stopped.


So today, when the alarm went off, I went outside to look for smoke. When I didn't see anything, I went downstairs. I saw the alarm was set off by one of my neighbours and went back upstairs. On my way there, the sad girl in the wheelchair asked what was going on. I told her I was going to check on it. When I got to the door, knocking a few times, a guy I see all the time, who I thought lived on the 3rd or 4th floor came over, telling me he lived there.

I asked if he knew what it was, he said just cooking, with a bit of smoke. I went back downstairs, making sure to tell the girl it was just cooking. The firemen came, I told them what was going on. They asked if I knew for sure (no, I'm just making an educated guess.... which I would be quite qualified to do by now). I told them I'd just talked to the guy who lived in the apartment (which I can't quite understand since I know for a fact that it's another guy (who looks like a lot like this guy) who lives there).

They told us to stay downstairs for a while. Then they tried to stop the alarm, but it kept going for twenty minutes. One fireman came back downstairs and told us we could go back upstairs ("just someone cooking... guess this isn't too uncommon, eh? heheh"). And we all went back to our rooms. Nothing scary. Never anything scary. Except the one time I wasn't home.


Just an ordinary Monday evening. I'm glad it's not like when we first moved in though - this was a three-times-a-week occurrence.