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brigdhThe stairs in my building are metal and hollow, so whenever anyone walks up or down them instead of taking the elevator, you can hear it, despite my apartment being down a hallway from the staircase. It doesn't matter, really, because it's not loud enough to be distracting.
Last night around 2:30, I was sitting up and reading before going to sleep, and it slowly filtered into my consciousness that a lot of people were walking up or down the stairs, and had been for several minutes. It sounded like a crowd was going somewhere. I looked up, curious, and noticed that there was the reflection of a flashing light on my wall. I got up and looked out of the window, and there were four or five firetrucks and multiple police cars surrounding my building, with all the attendant firefighters and police standing around that you would expect. Presumably they had been using sirens when they drove up, since they all still had the flashing lights on, but I live between several major hospitals and no longer hear sirens.
Given that no fire alarm or anything had gone off, I didn't think anything actively dangerous was happening, but on the other hand, I sure would feel stupid if I saw all this, went to bed anyway, and then died of smoke inhalation or something. I decided to go peek in the stairwell (which still had people walking up or down intermittently) and see what was happening.
I was in pajamas and barefoot and threw a blanket over my shoulders- because it was cold when I got out of bed- and went to look. There were three firemen on my landing, all completely fitted out for anything with axes and oxygen tanks and carrying huge canvas hoses, facing away from me.
"The captain says to go," one of them said to the others and they, well, went. I decided nothing important could be happening if they were leaving, and went back to my room to watch them leave out of my window.
So apparently last night my building didn't catch on fire! People just thought it did.
Last night around 2:30, I was sitting up and reading before going to sleep, and it slowly filtered into my consciousness that a lot of people were walking up or down the stairs, and had been for several minutes. It sounded like a crowd was going somewhere. I looked up, curious, and noticed that there was the reflection of a flashing light on my wall. I got up and looked out of the window, and there were four or five firetrucks and multiple police cars surrounding my building, with all the attendant firefighters and police standing around that you would expect. Presumably they had been using sirens when they drove up, since they all still had the flashing lights on, but I live between several major hospitals and no longer hear sirens.
Given that no fire alarm or anything had gone off, I didn't think anything actively dangerous was happening, but on the other hand, I sure would feel stupid if I saw all this, went to bed anyway, and then died of smoke inhalation or something. I decided to go peek in the stairwell (which still had people walking up or down intermittently) and see what was happening.
I was in pajamas and barefoot and threw a blanket over my shoulders- because it was cold when I got out of bed- and went to look. There were three firemen on my landing, all completely fitted out for anything with axes and oxygen tanks and carrying huge canvas hoses, facing away from me.
"The captain says to go," one of them said to the others and they, well, went. I decided nothing important could be happening if they were leaving, and went back to my room to watch them leave out of my window.
So apparently last night my building didn't catch on fire! People just thought it did.
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Date: 2007-03-30 06:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-31 08:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-30 07:57 pm (UTC)False fire alarms are always a pain, though--in college I was the Keymaster for a three-building apartment complex, which meant I spent plenty of nights running outside in my pajamas so I could open the door for the firemen because someone had burned dinner again.
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Date: 2007-03-31 08:33 pm (UTC)It hasn't been a common occurrence for me. Most of the buildings I've lived in anticipated that people would burn their dinners fairly often, so it wouldn't set off the alarm for the whole building. Once I lived in a place that made this big deal that their alarms were 'heat' instead of 'smoke': no matter how much smoke your bag of burnt popcorn or whatever sent up, as long as there wasn't a fire creating extra heat, no alarm would go off.
Which I'm very glad for. As much as I was amused to have this happen once, it would become incredibly irritating after a few times. Especially if I was actually having to go out in the cold because of it.