I was leaving the Student Center at my college today, already out the door and walking down the ramp into the quad, where I hear a familiar loud scream: the new outdoor System Sensor P2RK horn/strobe! Sure enough, the whole building evacuated, with me already outside in my new fursuit, since today is Halloween.
[YouTube]yv4RUjvLUWA[/YouTube]
I left the area once I heard the fire department arriving, because with me in a fursuit during a Halloween false alarm, I was a prime suspect for interrogation. Later on, I found out it was maliciously pulled, as someone’s dumb idea of a Halloween prank. Geez! I hope whoever did it gets in deep trouble.
(before i talk about the details of this false alarm, i havent listed the 5 times the fire alarm went off in the older building in the past 2 months here because im never in said building, so whats the point)
November 12th, 2019 at 9:18 AM CST
“can school be cancelled, question mark?”
So, me and my group table were in Video Design (basically a class where you get to edit videos its really cool) brainstorming ideas for our newscast assignment. We were able to go as silly as possible, so I’m not telling you guys any information because its embarrassing LOL. While playing this time wasting game called slither.io, the Siemens SET speaker/strobe on the ceiling began its round of code 3. The tone caught everyones attention in the room, and since the alarm wasnt red and FIRE lettered, everyone waited until the “there has been a fire reported in the building” segment of the message. That’s when we actually begun to evacuate. (imo the system should start with 1 round of code-3 and then say the message but idk if that flexibility is possible on a firefinder). Additionally, the wall-mounted speaker/strobe outside the classroom was sounding, being the first time ive been in the building seeing one in action. The worst part of this alarm was probably how freezing the weather was. We were standing outside for almost 10 minutes in 10 degree weather, and I only had my sweater on. It’s better to be freezing than to be burning, though.
The cause of the alarm I’m 99% sure was the removal of a OP921 smoke detector cover for the at the entrance fire door of the building as a whole. Before the alarms went off, the red cover was on, but afterwards only the base was there-- no detector itself.
I do have a video, but if I want to upload it I’m gonna have to make a throwaway youtube account since I don’t want anyone finding my channel.
Early in the morning today (before students and most staff arrived) a “fan motor” (according to an email that parents received) caught on fire in a crawlspace.
A custodian smelled smoke and pulled the alarm.
The fire appears to have been caused by a dehumidifier, probably one that had been recalled.
Has any deaths occurred from these faulty dehumidifiers malfunctioning and catching fire? If they haven’t yet, I fear it’s only a matter of time before it DOES happen and that will be sad.
Today as I was leaving the Fine Arts building at my college, I could hear a SpectrAlert Advance horn/strobe sounding in Code-3. At first I thought it was the one they installed outside the Student Center last summer, but then I followed the direction of the sound and figured it was the nearby Home Depot, which has an Advance in their outdoor gardening section. It was probably another false alarm there, as that’s happened before. (What with SpectrAlert Advances being so common, it’d be natural for me to initially think that one I heard was somewhere on campus, since four buildings have them, including the Fine Arts building!)
I have accepted long ago that the universe is gonna be full of alarms that came solely from System Sensor whether they be SpectrAlert Advances or the L-Series.
So your school not only has horn/strobes, but two sets of speaker/strobes that have different messages when they go off rather than the same message? This just keeps on getting more and more odd. Though honestly if they were all electromechanical horns I would be VERY interested. XD
so because of the coronavirus, this might be the end of any system activations i see from my school, since i won’t be at school. theres a possibility that we’ll open back up in april, but until then, that’s a wrap for me until collage.
I’m pretty sure that even AFTER the Coronavirus does pass that most schools will end up doing less fire drills than they should because they want to be extra cautious.
My assumption is that even if schools do go back into session in late April or early May (which at this point looks like the absolute best-case scenario), so much instruction time will have been lost that all safety drill requirements for the remainder of the year will probably be suspended in most states. After all, it would make no sense in states that require monthly drills to conduct three fire drills in a week just to “make up” for lost drills and lose out on 10-15 minutes of crucial instruction time for each drill. I’d imagine safety drills are pretty low on the priority list for admins right now anyways.
My elementary school sometimes did 3 fire drills in a week though they were spaced out as to not disrupt the same lesson that we were in. But the drills were done two days a week so one day we would have one drill in the morning and another in the afternoon since we had AM and PM kindergarten.
I’ll be locking the thread due to the school year being over, but we’ll open up a new one as we get close to the 2020-2021 school year! (Hopefully schools are back to normal again, at least for some of us.)
