Why Am I In Trouble?

[Adm_Hawthorne]

The fire alarm starts randomly going off at 6:15PM. So, I throw some pants on, put on some shoes, grab my phone, and head outside.

It's just my building going off.

The other women (yes, all housewives at this point) are standing around looking like they don't know what the heck to do. I call the office, but it's closed. The message says hang up and dial 911 if it's an emergency or I can leave an emergency message, and the apartment people will get back to me within 3 to 4 hours. Then, it rambles off a list of examples of 'emergency maintenance' situations. None of them are 'if you fire alarm is going off'.

I'm like, 'F* this. I'm calling 911'. I tell the people standing around what I'm doing. I call 911. They transfer me to the fire department. I tell the fire department the low down, and they send someone out.

As the fire truck is arriving, the apt. complex 'on duty' guy comes running around the corner with his daughter in tow. He starts looking around, trying to figure out what's going on.

Meanwhile, the plain shirt firemen (yes, all men) go around checking out doors for heat and looking for smoke. [I, being an idiot, bored, and trained to look for fire thanks my dorm mom/RA days have already done this. There's no fire.]

They determine there's no fire. Then, one of the firemen starts yelling at us, "Did any of you bother to call your apartment manager?"

I replied, "I did."

"All ya'll did? All 10 of ya'll called?"

"I don't know about everyone else, but I did. I had to leave a message. The office closes at 6."

"Next time this happens, you all need to call the apartment manager first... every single one of ya'll... 10 times!"

Then, the 'authorities' gather together to discuss, and the firemen leave. No one tells us its safe to go inside. But, I started to head in, and every one followed my lead. Apparently, I'm a leader of women, and men who sleep during the day.

But, here's the thing. What if there had been a fire? Then, we would have had to wait at least an hour for a response if I had just left the message and not called 911. I know because this has happened before. Frankly, I didn't want to take the chance. You know?

So, why am I being yelled out for calling the fire dept. when the fire alarm is going off? Answer me this. Because, when I left my apartment, we had no idea what was going on nor anyone to call and speak to find out what was going on.

I thought I did the right thing. I was clearly mistaken.

 

[Amaris]

Sounds like a bunch of idiots are in charge of everything where you live. Your clear headed, thoughtful consideration and natural leadership abilities make you an unwelcome dose of intelligence, it would seem.

Ah well, if it means anything, I think you did the right thing and if it were an emergency, you would have saved many lives.

 

[Defiant]

Awful that you actually made a fireman do his job. You interrupted their sitting around the firehouse watching All My Children... darn you!

 

[The Boy Who Cried Worf]

No you didn't do anything wrong. The fireman was grumpy for some reason and he decided to take it out on you. Fireman respond to alarms that are false all the time. A lot of commercial buildings have an automatic trigger where when ever an alarm goes off if alerts the fire department and they show up without you calling, whether there is a fire or not. Fireman should not give people attitude for false alarms. If your building has a general alarm that is not on anyone's property then it is there responsibility to have a plan for when that alarm goes off. Just try and blow off what the fireman said and if you ever again think your building maybe on fire by all means call the fire department

 

[Alpha Romeo]

Awful that you actually made a fireman do his job. You interrupted their sitting around the firehouse watching All My Children... darn you!

You obviously have no clue what firemen do during the day. Congratulations.

OP: There is obviously an issue with your alarm in your building. It should be connected directly to an alarm company or the fire department dispatch center. You did nothing wrong, and I'd have praised you had I been the officer on the truck.

Apparently this idiot didn't know his ass from his elbow.

 

[Defiant]

You obviously have no clue what firemen do during the day. Congratulations.

Our operating theory on this side of the fence is that they sit around wishing they were LE. After all, like the T-shirt said, God made cops so that firemen could have heroes, too.

Just joking dude, don't take it personally...

 

[Trekker4747]

Awful that you actually made a fireman do his job. You interrupted their sitting around the firehouse watching All My Children... darn you!

You obviously have no clue what firemen do during the day. Congratulations.

OP: There is obviously an issue with your alarm in your building. It should be connected directly to an alarm company or the fire department dispatch center. You did nothing wrong, and I'd have praised you had I been the officer on the truck.

Apparently this idiot didn't know his ass from his elbow.

This is kind of what I was wondering, why the alarm didn't automagicly call 911/the fire department. I mean, isn't that kind-of the point of it?

The fireman who yelled at the crowd is a douch-nozzle. On one hand, yeah, that one truck was out on a pointless call and may have been needed somewhere else if a "real" call occured at the same time.

However the chance that there was a fire was there since the alarm was set-off "somehow" so calling the fire department makes perfect sense. Calling the local fire-chief or whatever organization monitors and regulates fire-response may be in order. Maybe even a call to a local news station's "call for action" team.

Yelling at people for calling 911 when an alarm goes off and telling them instead to "call the office" and wait several hours for a response is absurd. Calls may also need to be made to the office and local housing authorities since the alarm apparently didn't automaticly call the fire-department in the first place.

 

[Adm_Hawthorne]

This is kind of what I was wondering, why the alarm didn't automagicly call 911/the fire department. I mean, isn't that kind-of the point of it?

The fireman who yelled at the crowd is a douch-nozzle. On one hand, yeah, that one truck was out on a pointless call and may have been needed somewhere else if a "real" call occured at the same time.

However the chance that there was a fire was there since the alarm was set-off "somehow" so calling the fire department makes perfect sense. Calling the local fire-chief or whatever organization monitors and regulates fire-response may be in order. Maybe even a call to a local news station's "call for action" team.

Yelling at people for calling 911 when an alarm goes off and telling them instead to "call the office" and wait several hours for a response is absurd. Calls may also need to be made to the office and local housing authorities since the alarm apparently didn't automaticly call the fire-department in the first place.

I have no idea why the alarm doesn't automatically alert the fire department. However, I'd take an educated guess and say they have it set up so that the actual 'on duty' person at the complex has to make 'the call'. But, we, as regular inhabitants of this place, have no freakin' clue what's set up, and they've never bothered to tell me.

I plan to contact the management office today to see what their procedures are on this type of situation.

I'm not willing to go so far as to call in the media. I suspect that would backfire horribly for me/us. But, I feel the first step is to find out why we were expected to contact the office first if the fire alarm is going off. I'll go from there.

 

[Mr Awe]

Very unprofessional of the fire department. Calling 911 when you did was appropriate. It's that simple. There's no point having 10 people call a closed office.

Mr Awe

 

[Scout101]

I don't respond well to idiots in situations like that. "Call 10 times"? I'd have explained how an answering machine works to him, and asked how many messages trigger someone actually answering them, whether 10 is really any different than 1.

Also appologize for making him do his job.

 

[Alpha Romeo]

You obviously have no clue what firemen do during the day. Congratulations.

Our operating theory on this side of the fence is that they sit around wishing they were LE. After all, like the T-shirt said, God made cops so that firemen could have heroes, too.

Just joking dude, don't take it personally...

I did take it personally, hence the snappiness of my original post.

 

[Alpha Romeo]

This is kind of what I was wondering, why the alarm didn't automagicly call 911/the fire department. I mean, isn't that kind-of the point of it?

The fireman who yelled at the crowd is a douch-nozzle. On one hand, yeah, that one truck was out on a pointless call and may have been needed somewhere else if a "real" call occured at the same time.

However the chance that there was a fire was there since the alarm was set-off "somehow" so calling the fire department makes perfect sense. Calling the local fire-chief or whatever organization monitors and regulates fire-response may be in order. Maybe even a call to a local news station's "call for action" team.

Yelling at people for calling 911 when an alarm goes off and telling them instead to "call the office" and wait several hours for a response is absurd. Calls may also need to be made to the office and local housing authorities since the alarm apparently didn't automaticly call the fire-department in the first place.

I have no idea why the alarm doesn't automatically alert the fire department. However, I'd take an educated guess and say they have it set up so that the actual 'on duty' person at the complex has to make 'the call'. But, we, as regular inhabitants of this place, have no freakin' clue what's set up, and they've never bothered to tell me.

I plan to contact the management office today to see what their procedures are on this type of situation.

I'm not willing to go so far as to call in the media. I suspect that would backfire horribly for me/us. But, I feel the first step is to find out why we were expected to contact the office first if the fire alarm is going off. I'll go from there.

Thats probably it. In that case then, where was the on duty person?

 

[RoJoHen]

The fireman was a moron. You did absolutely everything right. What is the point of a fire alarm if not to tell you that the fire department needs to show up?

 

[Adm_Hawthorne]

The fireman was a moron. You did absolutely everything right. What is the point of a fire alarm if not to tell you that the fire department needs to show up?

To be fair, when I was an RA back in my college days, our fire alarm was pulled on a almost a daily basis. If the fire department had come out every single time the thing went off, the expenses for the city would have been astronomical.

So, the RAs would have to run the halls and actually look for the fire. If there wasn't anything going down, then we'd reset the alarm and let the residents go back into the building. If there was something going down, we'd call the fire department.

I do understand that sometimes the alarms are not hooked up to automatically call the emergency crews for reasons like this.

If the office had been open, I would have just called the office and been done with it. But, our office is notorious for closing on the dot, and all staffers are gone before you can say, 'hail mary'. So, I wasn't willing to stand around for an hour or so while the building alarm wondering when the staffer was going to show up.

I mean, come on, on their list of approved emergencies, there was nothing about fire alarms.

 

[RoJoHen]

The fire department came to my college almost every day because they fire alarm would get pulled...or someone would accidentally overcook something on the stove...or my roommate would attempt to cook popcorn by boiling a giant pot of vegetable oil that caught on fire.

"Uh...guys...help!"

*I turn my head to see why the entire kitchen is glowing orange*

*roommate attempts to put out the grease fire...using water...*

*I grab a lid and cover the fire*

*the hood to the stove is now a lovely shade of black*

 

[Adm_Hawthorne]

I once had a girl put her weave in the microwave thinking that would make it dry faster.

Yeah... it doesn't, and the smell of burned hair lingered for the rest of the semester.

 

[Holdfast]

The fire department came to my college almost every day because they fire alarm would get pulled...or someone would accidentally overcook something on the stove...or my roommate would attempt to cook popcorn by boiling a giant pot of vegetable oil that caught on fire.

I remember fire alarms frequently going off in the middle of the night when I lived in college accommodation. After a while I didn't bother getting up, going out and freezing my arse off outside waiting to be let back in. Instead I used to just lean out of bed and check there wasn't any heat emanating from the floor, and if not, cover my head with the pillow and go back to sleep.

Fucking stupid on one level, but hell, I got lucky, and it was always just burnt toast.

 

[Jan]

You did absolutely the right thing. The fireman was entirely out of line and possibly blowing off an adrenaline rush...not that that excuses him. Don't let this incident put you off of taking action.

One time many years ago I was robbed at my workplace. As soon as the robber left I called the police (this was in the pre-911 days) and reported it with a description and direction he was headed. When a police car arrived 50 minutes later one of the officers demanded to know why I'd waited to call them. We didn't go any further until he'd called his dispacher to find out what time I'd actually called it in. Sometimes the officials have a bad day, too.

Jan

 

[Trekker4747]

One would also think that the office staffers would live at the complex and someone would constantly be "on call" for situations like this or other sudden non-office hours emergencies.

 

[pookha]

you did the rignt thing and that fireman should be educated that some fires are not that obvious.
i have seen a fire thought to be put out at an apt go into the insulation between walls.
it took a good while for it to break back out.

if this alarm hardly ever goes off then i would take it more seriously.