This morning at 2am, my building’s fire alarm started wailing. I of course woke up immediately, and turned off the tower fan at the foot of my bed. I’m not entirely sure why I thought the noise was coming from my fan, but apparently it made sense at the time.
Anyway, I finally snapped to it, threw some clothes on, went down eight flights of stairs and out the building. I was impressed (or concerned?) to find that I was one of the first 15 people outside. If you don’t know, I live in a 10 floor apartment building with about 20 rooms per floor, give or take.
Now, I find that just a little bit ridiculous. While the fire alarms at CMU tend to go off on a weekly basis, the alarm at my building has never gone off in my experience (aside from the designated testing times, 4x a year). And while I was pretty sure it was a false alarm, there was no way I could possibly know that given I didn’t even see the other side of the building.
My point – take fire alarms seriously. I think it’s a severe breakdown in common sense behavior to think it’s an OK thing to sleep through a fire alarm. Joke’s on you if it’s not a false alarm. Even more obnoxious, though, were the people who decided they would wait out the fire alarm inside the lobby. I must have missed the part in my lease that said that the lobby was fireproofed for our safety… but that might be because it didn’t say anything of the sort. Personally, I’d rather wait outside in the rain than inside in the fire. Is it just me?
So when I was apartment-shopping before I graduated this spring, I was trying to find a wheelchair-accessible one, right? But they were almost always upstairs. And then if there’s a fire, the elevators are shut down. What happens to those in wheelchairs? Oh, not to worry, APPARENTLY they post an 8″x10″ sign that says “Wheelchairs Upstairs” on the elevators so that the firemen would notice and come save us. Riiiiiiiiight. Which is why I’m now living in mega scary crack alley…’cause it’s the only place there was a first-floor opening.