Umm... I Guess We Know the Fire Alarm Works Now

Well, I guess I can say now that I know what the fire alarms in our building sound like now.

Last week, Matt turned on the wrong burner on the stove scalding the bottom of an empty tea kettle and setting off the in unit fire alarm. This alarm sets off the most anxiety inducing, ear piercing pitch I have ever heard come out of a fire system. Overtop of this nasty noise is a calm digitized female voice proclaiming "Fire! Fire!" which I supppose I found mildly disturbing because the voice sounded oddly like GLaDOS of Portal. Somewhere in my mildly freaked out state I was half expecting the fire alarm to come out and say she flooded the Enrichment Center with a deadly neurotoxin or if I finished the task correctly I'd get some cake.

The alarm, being disturbing on so many levels, did do it's job somewhat effectively. It made me want to leave the space. So, in a round about sense, that was comforting.

This morning, the whole building alarm went off. It ended up being a false, and all is well... but I'm somewhat left feeling the opposite reaction to the in unit alarm... Disturbed by my utter lack of a panic.

The alarm did effectively wake me up... but the noise wasn't unbearably irritating. I stumbled out of bed and into the living room confused as to where the whooping noise was coming from, and asked my husband, "What's going on?"

He said, "Put your pants on."

It still wasn't registering what the noise was for, so I asked, "Huh? Why?"

He gives me an look like I'm dumb, "Umm.. because there's a fire alarm going off and we have to go outside?"

I wonder what I would have done if this had happened after he'd left for work for the day... I'm fairly certain putting on my pants and going outside probably wouldn't have occurred to me. It probably wouldn't have occurred to me to stick my head in the hallway to see if the strobes were blinking either... and I dunno... considering a fire alarm is supposed to cause people to want to, you know, evacuate the area... I find that thought disturbing.

That said, I have a bone to pick with fire code about now... According to my husband (who used to work for a company that installed fire systems and did inspections) code for residential units only requires the use of strobes in unit if it's a handicap accessible. Normal units are only required to have a horn. I hadn't much thought about it up until now, but the strobes are actually MORE telling that it's an emergency than the alarm is. I would bet you a hundred bucks that if I'd walked into my living room and saw a strobe, I would have known immediately what was going on.