fire alarm...

I was at the library working until 9pm last night so I arrived home at almost 10 pm. After eating dinner, checking my mails and the weather for the next day,  I went to bed. That was almost midnight.

About a few minutes after I had finally fallen asleep, my roommate knocked on my door. I thought I was just dreaming but I saw that the light in the hallways was on and I thought, hmmm I turned off the lights before going to my room last night. It was then that I heard the continuously annoying ringing of what turned out to be all the fire alarms in our apartment - the living room and the three bedrooms, except the one in my room!

I went out to find my roommate on the phone calling someone trying to find out what to do and who to call because the emergency number for our apartment listed in their website and flyer was not working. I remember receiving an e-mail from them about an alternative number to call for after hours emergencies. Thank God yahoo now has unlimited storage! So I found the number, called it and left my number on the machine that said someone would call us. When we didn't receive a call back after a few minutes, we then again asked each other who else we should call. Since there was no fire and we didn't want to call 9-11, we frantically searched for the city police number. After finding it, she called them and few minutes later a fire truck pulled up outside our door.

Three really burly, but really friendly, fire marshals inspected our apartment. They checked all the bedrooms and confirmed that there was no fire. At this point, we were still waiting for the on-call maintenance from our apartment, when the alarms suddenly stopped! According to them, they haven't reset anything so they were as puzzled as we were about what caused it to go off and then stop after over an hour. Since there was nothing else they could do, they left and told us to call them if it sounds again.

The maintenance guy arrived after a few more minutes. When I asked if the alarms in the building normally go off for no apparent reason, he said that "well, these alarms are 13 years old". He showed us how to turn them off in case there was no fire and it sounded. That was past 2am. I was planning to wake up at 4am to write essays and read today's book for my Psych class. So much for that plan.

I know that grabbing my laptop in an emergency would be pretty stupid but losing travel and scholarship documents would still be a nightmare for anyone in a foreign country. So I decided to prepare a get away bag with my important documents and back up files that I could quickly grab as I dash out of the house next time - although I honestly hope I never have to use it!

Although this was an unpleasant experience, I am just very thankful that there was no actual fire. It is also comforting to know that the fire and police departments are quick to respond.