Alarming

So I'm having a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper the other evening and this ear-splitting alarm sounds. It was my first fire alarm here in my new high-rise apartment. I knew what to do: I headed for the stairwell and gathered there with other residents to await instructions.

A lot of people were obviously dressed in winding-down mode, although it was still fairly early by my standards. There were some men and women in pajamas and bathrobes. Others of us were in casual clothes -- me in a T-shirt and jeans and flip-flops, others in sport shirts and khakis and sneakers. We chatted for a while, shouting a bit to be heard above the blaring alarm. One of the women in a bathrobe said she was taking a shower when the alarm began sounding. Her wet hair was wrapped in a towel. She was clearly not happy.

There was no smell of smoke in the stairwell. About 4 or 5 minutes passed, and the alarm stopped. We heard voices from the floors above and below us, but nobody seemed excited, and nobody was evacuating from the floors above. The consensus was that it was a false alarm, and we ventured back to our apartments.

Cassie was hiding behind the couch with her ears laid back. She had clearly been really frightened by the loud noise. I sat down on the floor and reassured her, and she settled down, although she stuck close to me as I picked up the newspaper again.

Then came the sound of sirens growing closer, and as I watched at my window (from which I can see the main entrance to the building if I look straight down), a couple of fire trucks, a police car and a fire chief showed up. But nobody was hurrying. There was no laying of hose, no rushing into the building.

Then the piercing alarm started up again, but as soon as I got to my door, it stopped. Still, the scene below my window did not look like there was any emergency. The hallway was quiet; nobody was rushing to the stairwell this time. Firemen stood at the building's entrance, chatting.

I called the front desk to ask what was going on. Since it was after hours, I got a security guard who said he didn't know what was up either, but that I should not be too worried since the fire alarm had stopped and he had not been notified of any emergency. He told me, in essence, to stay alert.

The fire trucks stayed for about 30 minutes and then went away.

A couple of people were chatting in the lobby when I went down a while later to check my mailbox. They didn't know what had happened either. One of them told me that the most common cause of false alarms here is popcorn and microwave ovens. It seems people set their microwaves for too long and the popcorn begins to burn and smoke.

I eventually went to bed without knowing more. Maybe I'll hear something through the grapevine, or maybe from the management, which is fond of leaving flyers and notifications in the little wire baskets on the walls outside our doors.

Evidently it was nothing serious.

I did find out first-hand that there's no way I could miss a fire alarm here. It's really, really loud. And that's reassuring.