So here’s an interesting story that happened last month at my Dad’s work (ComEd).
One of the buildings my Dad maintains is a 10 story office building (2 Lincoln Centre). It’s got a Simplex 4100 panel with 4906-9151 TrueAlert speaker/strobes on the first floor (Previously, there were 4903 rectangular speaker/strobes which were replaced early this year. I acquired all of them), and the rest of the floors have 4903 series TrueAlert speaker/strobes and various 4904 strobe units. 2099 or 4099 pulls.
Anyway, it was the day of a planned fire drill in the building. My Dad and his friend were about to set off the alarm with one of the pull stations. Meanwhile, in the front lobby of the building, there was a ComEd employee on the phone with a customer. Dad then pulled the alarm. The lady at the desk in the building heard the alarm and freaked out. She quickly said to the lady on the other end that she had to go, without mentioning it was because of a fire alarm. No one really knows what happened after that before she evacuated. A rumor is she slammed the phone down on the base or let it drop. Whatever the sound was, the customer on the other end called 911 and said that she “defiantly heard gunshots.”
After the building was evacuated, the occupants were surprised to see police and a S.W.A.T team swarming the building. It took a long time for them to check to every floor (including the roof and penthouse), every closet, every room, and every elevator. Meanwhile, all the nearby roads were blocked off. All the nearby hotels and businesses were put on lock down. After a good two hours, the all-clear was given.
So of course, no shots were fired, and there was no actual emergency. Just a fire drill gone way wrong. Thousands of wasted dollars. As for the lady on the other line, I don’t know if she got in trouble, but I hope she did. She could have at least said she thought that she might have heard gun shots fired, but it was very presumptuous of her to say that she defiantly heard gunshots.
There’s more information on this official ABC 7 story: http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?id=9251861
