Where's the Fire?

I realize that I forgot to post yesterday, and I apologize for that. I was staffing a weekend-long Model UN conference that kept me busy and sleep-deprived during all hours of the day Friday-Sunday.


I theoretically almost killed my roommate last week.

The fire alarm in our building goes off so regularly (due to testing and pranksters) that the entire floor has taken a relatively passive approach to responding to it. When it sounds we all poke our heads out and have a debate over whether or not it's real, and whether or not we're going down. This debate involves not just discussion, but checking emails and looking out windows as well. It is our carefree approach to fire safety. This relates somewhat directly to the events of last week.

It was approximately 9:30 a.m. when the fire alarm woke me up. The closest alarm to my door is outside and down the hall a little ways, so it wasn't very loud, and it took me a moment to process that it was actually coming from my building, and not the one across from me. The next logical step: check my email to see if it's a test. The email told me that the alarm was being tested from 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. on January 29th. I was immediately annoyed that they would wake me up at such an hour, but felt reassured and planned on waiting for it to stop screaming so I could go back to sleep. A few minutes later it finally woke up my roommate, who I relayed the contents of the email to. We stayed in our beds, waiting. I would have continued to lie there, annoyed but unconcerned, if it hadn't been for a text from my friend saying that everyone else was outside and being forced away from the building. I was confused by this, so I finally checked the date on my phone.

It was January 28th.

Panicked now, I told my roommate to get up and we hurried outside, unsure of what exactly was going on. We were not the last ones to evacuate, a testament to the confusion caused by the email.

In the end, there was no fire. We would have been fine, and our carefreeness was a true reflection of life in the building.

But if there had been a fire, we would have been in trouble.