Every time the fire alarm sounds, several tenants call me and ask what’s going on. I work on the second highest floor with the fire alarm control panel on the grand floor. If every time the alarm sounds I had to answer say just 5 of these calls simultaneously and immediately, how am I suppose to call my guards to find out which floor sounded the alarm and in time to go check it out? My answer to them each an every time was “I don’t know, get the hell out while you still can.”, as I go down the stairs myself only to find out even after 15 minutes none that called came down. I am no prophet, nor am I Mr. Incredible. I don’t want to spend the possibly last few minutes of my life worrying fools’ lives.
This afternoon was no different. A smoker’s live cigarette triggered the smoke detector. The fire alarm system worked precisely what it was designed to. They called, I told them all to get out of the building, only one out of no less than 50 did. As I got to the first floor, two guys came up the stairs. I asked them where they are going and they simply said the lifts were not working when they wanted to go upstairs while the fire alarm rang loudly though out the building that the entire block was made aware of it. Lifts didn’t work – no kidding! There is possibly a fire in the building, get the hell out!
The fact is, not only does the fire alarm works fine with only 3 true faults in its 13 year life span, it had gone through a full yearly system checkup and maintenance just a month ago which everyone is aware of.
A fire alarm to me works when it sounded and warned off whatever anyone was doing which triggered the alarm before one kept doing so and resulted in a true fire – not after a fire has started. So, in ideal situation, when an alarm sounded there should be no fire at all to be found. In case of a true fire, it could have been too late to call me, and I am not in my office 24/7, sorry.
Tenants replied they are too busy to worry about false alarms but their sense of “real” alarm could have been fatal. Truly “have time to die but no time to get sick”? What good is the last few minutes of one’s life is to the business over having the rest of one’s life to work on it? – Well, it would be no difference if those few more minutes happened to be truly the last few minutes of one’s life, I suppose.
They all reminded me the Cry Wolf title. What bothers me is that while they all seemed to remember the first half of the Cry Wolf story, no one remembers the second half of the story – in comparison to a fire alarm, everyone would have been dead by ignoring the alarm.
There is no false fire alarm if and only if everyone treated every single fire alarm not as such.
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