Wake the dead! Wake the Dead!
To be waked up by the world’s most effective alarm clock is not a pleasant thing. But as the name implies, it is effective. I’m awake, James is awake, my neighbors are either awake or have gone back to bed, etc. If you haven’t figured it out, I’m speaking of my apartment building’s fire alarm…
Why was it going off? It seems somebody left a candle burning all night in their first floor apartment last night and the soot built up to a point where the alarm was triggered. Once, we made it to the stairwells we could really smell it strong but thankfully the smell of smoke was very absent. So, everyone waited inside the main entrance to our 24 unit apartment building for the fire department to arrive and shutoff the alarm.
People were obviously irritated due to the inconvenience and one couple’s 8 or 9 year old daughter was visibly upset thinking that there really was a fire. Her fear was annoying her father and that didn’t make his attitude any better. I can’t contrast these behaviors with one’s when they are calm because even though the people in my building are friendly they don’t socialize with each other as far as I can tell. But what I can say is that judging by the reaction of their families to their behavior, these people are different when put under stress.
I suppose all people are different when placed under some kind of stress. Some use that energy in positive ways and some use it negatively. I think most use it somewhere in between while leaning toward the negative. That’s just my own opinion and it’s not based on any study that I’ve read or anything like that. It’s just something I’ve observed over the years by working in a high-stress environment.
“That’s all well and good, Sigmund, but how were you feeling?” you ask. I was surprisingly calm. When the alarm first went off, I threw my robe on hoping that I had everything covered and went out into the hallway. I tried to smell for smoke but figured that if there were a fire the smoke was blocked by the hall fire doors that had closed. So, I walked down to the main stairs and smelled around and couldn’t find any hint of smoke. I didn’t notice the candle smell.
Arriving back at my apartment the thought went through my head, “There’s no fire because you didn’t smell smoke. And besides, you didn’t hear anyone else running around in their apartments.” Now, having gone through Damage Control school while in the Navy I knew that just because I couldn’t smell anything didn’t mean that a fire did not exist. So, I decided to go ahead and go through the drill because it was good practice.
I woke James up and told him to put some clothes on and I put some clothes on as well. I was not going into the snow in my robe and underwear! On our way out I remembered Abby, our cat. She was scared so it took some coaxing to get her out from under my bed. I just knew she was going to claw me to pieces when we walked by the alarms but I covered her ears tightly and held her snug. She did well.
As we all stood together near the building’s front door, one common complaint became clear: why was the fire department taking so long to get here? Not really knowing the area too well, i had no idea where the fire department was located or even how long it should take for them to arrive. Other people must have known since they were making their dissatisfaction known. Not in a rant but in responses to questions and such. Me? I was just thankful that our alarm system worked and that we had a fire department that did respond. Time was not a factor to me because there didn’t seem to be a danger present. James and I talked about all this when we went to Dunkin Donuts after the alarm was turned off.
BTW, the whole thing lasted 30 minutes.
