For the first time in the 13 years I’ve gone to school we had a false fire alarm activation. Someone in the high school was apparently being stupid and pulled one of the 4251-20s. The alarms rang for 6 minutes and the FD never showed up. I got to see the 4002 still in a silenced alarm almost 15 minutes later and I saw it get reset. It was definitely a experience to remember.
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That’s the occurrence I wait for: I’ve been involved in a handful of fire drills as well as an actual fire at school, but never anything after that.
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I had a similar experience in 3rd grade… it was also my first false alarm at school, and what happened was during dismissal, a smoke detector somewhere in the building had a false alarm. It set off all the alarms (Gentex GX-90S’s) and the school was quickly evacuated, 911 was called, and the fire department showed up promptly. Now remember that this was during dismissal, so there were a line of buses on one side of the school and a line of parents picking up their kids on the other side. This created quite the chaos, also considering that probably about half the students were already on their way home. This meant that teachers couldn’t accurately take attendance, and lots of confusion arose. We stood outside in our assigned evacuation spots for probably 40+ minutes, as teachers, firefighters and principals were sorting everything out. We were standing there long enough that rumors of a real fire started spreading, despite it only being a false alarm. Finally, the all-clear was given, and we were basically just told to get on our buses/go to our parents. Welp, because we’re told to leave everything behind in a fire alarm situation, many kids went home that day without their backpack.
I also had a REAL lockdown in 2nd grade, but that’s a story for another day.
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Oh, I also was part of a real fire, at the same school, in Kindergarten. A ceiling light caught fire for some reason, and again the whole building was evacuated. No damage, no injuries, and it was the end of a half day anyways, so we were just sent home. So yeah, I’ve been present for many emergencies lol. Also something kinda funny is that the firefighters came to visit the Kindergarteners to talk about their job and fire safety stuffs EARLIER THAT DAY. Coincidence?
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In my elementary school, I can only remember one false alarm. It was after school and I was in the after school daycare. We were outside on the playground when I saw a flashing light in the window. I asked the teacher what it was and she said that a baby pulled the fire alarm. Pretty soon I saw some other people come out of the building and I could hear the simplex mechanical horns in continuous when they opened the door.
I had one last year at my middle school. My grade was at lunch and I was actually just finishing using the bathroom and washing my hands. I heard the simplex whoop and saw the strobe flash. We went outside for about 15 minutes but it was like 20°F so it wasn’t pleasant. Apparently the cooking class triggered the alarm.
Although I’m not yet in high school, I did experience a false alarm there in 4th grade. We were practicing for our music program in the auditorium when the Wheelock 7002t’s went off.
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That is real strange and it may be a coincidence, but you never know when something will happen.
If I were to talk about all the false alarms at school this post would be a book lol
My elementary school had a old pyrotronlcs system that constantly went off. it was mostly a faulty smoke detector but once the FACP malfunctioned sending it into alarm after that it was replaced with a MS10ud because it would not reset and go into alarm when it was powerd up. then there was one actuall fire in the kitchen Times when there was an actual fire at school /work - #38 by WheelockNS the whole story is in this topic.
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Wow, that’s a lot of false alarms.
Al least you got to hear those horns. I’ve always loved the sound of 7002ts.
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Update: a kid pulled it due to thinking they smelled smoke. There was confirmed to be nothing and the kid didn’t get in trouble. The fire department never came due to a dead communicator which was replaced today by Summit Fire Protection.
I was honestly hoping it would never happen, but it did.
4 years ago whilst I was in school I had a real fire alarm activation, a detector in a portable was tripped because a kitchen inside of it was on fire, I saw smoke rising out of the building, and a office lady was yelling into her radio to evacuate, the fire department was dispatched and the trailer was destroyed
Was cool but scary
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Wow, that would be scary to me being I’m not a fan of large fire.
It was very bad, the inside of the trailer got wrecked
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My elementary school had Wheelock 7002ts and when the alarms went off I was in the part of the school with them
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Today we actually had a false alarm at school. I was sitting in my earth science class going over my notes when the fire alarm went off. We all went outside and we were out there for about 30 minutes. They were blowing out the lawn sprinklers that day and the were using one of those gas powered air compressors that sits on top of a truck. Apparently, they had the garage door that goes into the mechanical room open and the exhaust got in and tripped a smoke detector.
Not sure how exhaust would trip a smoke, but at least they know what might have caused it.
Yeah I don’t know either. I have heard of residential ionization smoke alarms being tripped from car exhaust but never modern addressable photoelectric smoke detectors.
At my school in 2021 we had a picture frame fall on a pull station then last year a smoke detector failed or somthing
what pull station was at your school