WeeeeWeeeeWeeeeWeeee!

[enismirdal]

OK, this is fun!

From what I can gather, someone on the top floor of our flat complex was trying to cook sausages andset their oven on fire. One of their flatmates, thinking it wasmore serious than it was, set off the fire alarm, which unfortunately is a Chad's-wide thing. And EXTREMELY loud.

The fire was out before everyone had even fully evacuated (Eni managed to grab her cup of coffee on the way out - good move!), but the alarm is linked into the fire brigade, so the fire engines came automatically. A couple of mildly-annoyed looking firemen went to investigate, and went away again, though the trucks are stilloutside.

We've been informed that the duty porter doesn't know how to deactivate the alarm, and some porters are on their way, but taking their sweet time. In the meantime, we've been assured it's quite safe, and so here I am, wearing earplugs* and wondering if I should start my own dinner soon.

*My earplugs claim on the packet to reduce high-freqeuncy noise by about 40dB, and low-frequency noise by about 20. Since the fire alarm, I'm guessing, is about 120dB - painful - the earplugs have reduced it down to around 80 from my ears' point of view - annoying, but I can basically live with it.

EDIT: There apparently is a porter here now, but he doesn't know where the fire alarm shut-off is, or how to work it!

Comments

[melime.livejournal.com]

Augh, same thing happening around here as well, although here I don't know what's setting the alarms off. We've had them go off three times now -- the first time around 10:00 at night, and the last two times really early in the morning. The firemen arrive, but they can't do anything about the alarm and have to leave it on till whoever knows how to stop it wakes up and comes to work, I guess.

It's scary, though, because I can't hear it too well in my room. The last time I woke up at 6:30 AM or so and noticed it was on. I don't know how long it had been on. So if there was a real fire, would I wake up? Yikes. Let's hope it never comes to that.

[elbereth-elena.livejournal.com]

Oh no! I hate firealarms. There have been 8 night fire alarms since I got here and the first time it was the old system and they couldn't turn it off and I thought I'd have to spend the night in the corridor of the other building. They let us back in but it went off all night. So, when it comes to fire alarms, I feel your pain!