This morning I made myself breakfast. That’s not particularly unusual, I have breakfast at home about half the time. Today, I had bacon and eggs with tastes-like-home-made-but-isn’t tomato relish and a vanilla chai latte. Everything was ready at the same time so I sat down to enjoy it. At the exact second that I picked up the fork, the whole building’s fire alarms went off.
No, it had nothing to do with burning my breakfast, the alarm definitely wasn’t triggered by me. When they test the alarms, it just goes off for a second or so, so I waited hopefully. Maybe they were doing a longer test? 10 seconds maybe? No such luck. Regretfully, I put down my fork and picked up my keys, swipe card and phone and trudged down 12 flights of stairs. I joined the rest of my neighbours seeking shade under the walkway and stared up the the building for some clue about who to blame for the disruption. No evidence was forthcoming.
There’s a surprising number of people at home at 10am on a Monday morning. A barefoot bunch of teenagers looked like they were still asleep. An elderly chinese woman looked a bit scared, as opposed to annoyed as the rest of us were. Most people were out within a few minutes, but a few seemed to take forever to get the message. One couple sauntered out about 5 minutes later. About 10 minutes after the alarm was raised, two asian girls stumbled out of the fire escape stairwell wearing their pyjamas and high heels. At the same time, those of us still periodically scanning the building noticed a guy standing on his tenth floor balcony looking down at us while talking on his cellphone. How he could hear anything was beyond me. He finally emerged nearly 5 minutes later.
It was over 15 minutes before the fire brigade arrived. They went up the fire escape with the building manager’s master key to check it out, but apparently didn’t find anything. After about 15 minutes of investigation, they turned off the alarms and let us all back inside. The building manager apologised to us as we entered the building, and as I queued through the lobby, I heard the firefighters asking the builders what they’d just been working on and if it was near the sprinklers.
It took another 5 minutes to get through the queue for the lifts. You can’t walk up the stairs in this building. Apart from the carpark levels, there are fire exits only – no access to the upper floors except with a master key. Today, I saw more people from this building than I have all year. Most, I may never see again, unless there is another fire alarm.
February 22nd, 2010 at 11:22 pm
Probably because the exams for the summer school are finished and new students are moving into their apartment and getting ready for the first semester of uni. The stairs work the same way as my apartment, the doors to the upper floors can only be unlocked by the master key from the building manager.
I been meaning to ask, what construction are going on in your building? I saw the back entrance (the one next to China reataurant) is block off for construction.
February 22nd, 2010 at 11:38 pm
Yeah, I figure the barefoot bunch are all uni students, but most of the others seemed to be older (like me).
They’re upgrading/altering the lobby at the moment. They’ve moved the postboxes inside and they seem to be expanding the atrium outwards. I don’t know exactly what it’s supposed to look like when it’s finished, but it’s supposed to be done next month.
February 24th, 2010 at 9:05 am
Your breakfast sounds good, hopefully still tasted ok cold.
Must be quite an experience with the fire alarm going off in the apartment building; other than for work. (At least by then, we are usually dressed and awake… well more or less)
Hmm.. imagine if you were half way through a shower when the alarm goes off…
February 24th, 2010 at 6:37 pm
Actually, last time the fire alarm went off, there was one little boy wearing just shorts and wrapped in a towel with wet hair. I’d assumed he’d been in the pool at the time, but the I heard the building manager asking and apparently he was in the shower. He evacuated pretty quickly though – some of the the others took so long that for all I know they got in the shower after the alarm went off.