Worst fire alarm experiences you ever had?

What was the worst fire alarm experiences you ever had?
For me I have three, mostly from elementary school:
[]I remember once in Kindergarten we had a HazMat/Shelter in Place drill, as we we’re heading out to recess the principal called a “Code Yellow” over the intercom and after that the fire alarms went off. I had to cover my ears to drown out the sound of the LOUD Wheelock MT-WM Horn/Strobe (sounding in Continuous horn), it was so miserable. I remember for two other “Code Yellow” drills having to cover my ears thinking that they would set off the fire alarms.
[
]I also remember in Kindergarten we we had a false fire alarm as a result of the system malfunctioning. I recall my class was in another class when the alarms went off, we followed the routine and went to our assigned areas. After the alarms shut off they rang the all clear signal, we proceeded back to the building, but as we were doing so they went off again and we had to repeat the procedure a number of times. I’m sure after I left with my mom they made an announcement to disregard the fire alarms. It went off the next day during the school’s carnival too!
[*]In third grade once, the principal announced that we would have a fire drill that morning at 8:30. I was so afraid I covered my ears in an attempt to drown out the sound. By the time 8:30 came I was in the resource room and by then the Federal 450D started blaring in continuous. I remember having a fire drill once during speech therapy in second grade in May 2004.

In Kindergarten, we only ever had two fire drills: at the start of the year, and the end. Very fun part was that we had Simplex TrueAlerts in the classrooms, so it was pretty dang loud. So the teacher told us that we were going to have a “fire drill,” and being the young, dumb kids we were, we were all like “what is ‘fier drel?’” She told us the procedures of what to do, how to get away from infinityºF flames. We all probably thought that was cool or something. Sadly, in the middle of her explanation, “EEEEEH… EEEEEH… EEEEH…”. I can remember us screaming covering their ears running around the room, but in about five seconds we were in single file and finally evacuated the building. We were all shivering in the room because we did NOT want to hear those horns (I don’t blame us, TrueAlerts can be very loud). So when it happened again, it was pretty much the same story, I’ll bet shorter.

Moral of story: dont put simplex truealert horn strobes in tiny kindergarten classrooms on high volume, and dont put them in the classroom’s bathroom either (door was open so extra loud)

Worst fire alarm experience? Whenever I’ve just missed one. :wink:

Not much experience with the real “big guns” like Standard 30A’s or 10" bells, and nothing embarrassing like being caught in the lavatory, but I can think of a few:

  • My dad, my brother, and I were staying at a hotel for PAX East, and this happened:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBoeIOHyzRY
    That was fun. The automated announcements that continued into the wee hours of the morning were not.

  • During naptime in preschool, a curious kid pulled the cord in the bathroom while I was half-asleep. The light had a mechanical buzzer in it. My first thought was “fire drill”, but I quickly realized it was the bathroom light. Being a larger version of a dryer buzzer*, I think it may have scared me worse. They turned it off pretty quickly, but now the possibility of a fire alarm was running through my head. A few minutes later and not quite an octave higher, a more familiar noise. I can’t decide if it was worse because of the initial scare and paranoia from the call light, or better because I was more mentally prepared for the actual fire drill. But it was memorable nonetheless.

  • The two fire drills we had in gym class at my first elementary school were pretty bad. As I’ve mentioned before, the anticipation of the alarm going off in a large room scared me, and the -9838 in the cramped emergency exit was miserable.

  • The buzzer of the dryer at my grandma’s scared me a little, and I used it to get over my fear the preschool fire alarms. Sometimes, I’d say “fire drill” when it went off, and I’d go outside.

Nothing really bad but I did have some experiences that I wouldn’t want to have again and think that they sucked a whole lot and couldn’t really stop grumbling about for a while afterwards. From least worst to worst:

  1. During 3rd grade, we were doing a project with paper mache and we had to go to the bathrooms to wash our hands. The 9219s nearby went off and while it wasn’t that bad, I didn’t get to wash my hands off because I had to wait for my turn near the bathrooms. Ironically enough, I could have taken this time to peek my head into the bathroom where there were 9101 remote strobes and realize that they weren’t horns after all because that was the reason I was terrified of using the bathroom in school and ALL bathrooms except the bathrooms in the cafeteria/gymnasium had these strobes.

  2. I was in 8th grade and me and a few other girls were taking a shower after gym class. It was about a few days before Thanksgiving and everything was normal up until that point. Then the fire alarm went off for a drill. THAT wasn’t the bad part. The 4051 in the gym wasn’t even that loud. The bad part was having to get my clothes on while sopping wet and going outside in the cold while dripping and waiting for the drill to finish. Although I will admit, when you have a 4051 blaring in continuous, it was hard to try to force your wet body into clothes.

  3. This was in 7th grade during 1st period when I had science. It seems that the wing that I was in had their 4051s set LOUDER than any other wing in the school and was the first instance of me grimacing and being uncomfortable during a fire alarm. I really couldn’t get out of their fast enough because of how deafening it sounded and not knowing there were more deafening alarms. The only positive thing I have to say is that I liked the pitch in that wing and I was glad I was in another wing with the same pitch but the alarms were quieter.

  4. This was in 9th grade and we had a fire drill. The 9838s as I was going out of my 4th period English class weren’t that loud at least at first. But the exit route we had to take required going out a back hallway where there was a direct exit into it from the Teen Center which had a 9838 right next to the doors. Not only was it excruciatingly loud in the back hallway that I had to cover my ears, but the 9838 next to the Teen Center exit was HEAD LEVEL, I really felt bad for anybody who was in the Teen Center at that point and had to go out that way. Not only was there one alarm in the Teen Center, but going out those back doors you would be head level an incredibly loud horn. I was in the Computer Lab in the Teen Center one time but I was prepared and quickly ran down those stairs with my ears covered. The last time would be in 11th grade where we had an obstructed fire alarm (only my second in all my time in school!) and that was the exit we had to go. Once again I was able to cover my ears.

  5. 10th grade. Total. Hell. I was with my class downstairs in a special education classroom which also had computers in it and we were using the computers down there instead of in the computer lab when the fire alarm went off. That’s not the bad part. The bad part is that both the alarm in the special education room went off, it was a 2DCD which was REALLY loud (NewAgeServerAlarm would know what I’m talking about). I was sitting as far away from the alarm as possible and even then it was so loud I thought my ears would burst. I had to cover my ears and even that wasn’t enough. The exit route that we take is the doors by the Cosmetology shop where there is ANOTHER 2DCD. These horns are so loud, they overtake the 9838s on the stairwell and the two 9838s in the Cosmetology theory room and their nail room. The only thing I will admit is that they did sound nice with their pitches.

Here are two that stick out in my memory:

The first was in second grade, sometime in May. I was in music class, and we were standing on the risers to prepare for a concert, when suddenly a TrueAlert horn/strobe right above me goes off. That wasn’t really the bad part, and we evacuated like normal. The bad part, however, was re-entering the building with the TrueAlerts on audible silence. Why would that be uncomfortable? As some of you know, SmartSync TrueAlerts do a half-blast of the horn when reset from audible silence. Anyways, we walk back into the classroom with the strobes still flashing, and continue to work on our music or whatever. About five minutes after being let back in, the principal came over the loudspeaker to let everyone know that there were “technical issues” with the system and to just ignore the flashing. So, for the next 20 minutes I stood right underneath that TrueAlert waiting for the half-blast, and finally they did manage to reset the system, but it was still really uncomfortable. Now on to my more recent and much worse story…

6th grade. March or early April. We have a lockdown while I’m in the bathroom (by the way, the one bathroom at my school that has a horn/strobe). So I do what’s always been instructed of me and get into a stall and sit on top of the toilet. About two minutes into the drill, the TrueAlerts sound. I really shouldn’t have to explain any beyond this.

Honorable Mention: THREE different fire drills in 8th grade (held during Science). Now, I will say that these were some of the funniest and most bizarre fire drills that I’ve ever been apart of, however while I didn’t have any bad experiences with these drills, my science teacher very clearly did. I’ll just tell one of the several awkward fire drill stories from my Science class, even though I could probably make a whole separate topic about it. Basically, this was in September, second week of school, first drill of the year. I walk into Science to see written on the board ‘Fire Drill-1:30’ (this would have been about 1:20). My Science teacher briefly greets us, then proceeds to grab the emergency folder and stand in the corner of the room opposite the alarm with her ears half-covered. Also keep in mind, the drill wasn’t scheduled to start for another 10 minutes or so. Anyways, when the fire alarm finally does go off, my teacher literally runs out of the classroom, leaving all of her students wondering what to do. Eventually we wound up leaving through the (wrong) door, which our Science teacher then proceeded to yell at us for after the drill.

OH MY GOD. I remember one time between third-fifth grade that when they did a drill they always put the TrueAlerts on audible silence for 1-2 minutes, and one day the horn buzzed for half a second which scared me. Though one time, I guess they had a really bad issue with the system, so the alarm were… on audible silence… for the entire. dang. day. We went through every class as usual while the strobes were still flashing. We could even hear the click they made every second. It was amazing, but suspenseful too, since me and a lot of students thought it was going to sound again. Luckily they fixed it the next day.

The worst experience I ever had was probably when I was in JHS…
Every time we had a fire drill a smoke extraction turbine in the central hall would start and literally hold half-open the entrance door, add that to the lots of AVISS DS01 sounders echoing in the hallways. I would always wait for the UGA (“Alarm Gestion Unit”) to finally silence the horns (due to NF-SSI standards, you cannot silence the sounders on french FA Panels, they automatically silence the signals after 5 minutes). What’s worse that back in the day, the class change (what was called “interclasse”) signal was (because it’s been replaced recently, now it’s a chime tone played over the intercom) a steady pulse for 20 seconds. Every time after the fire drill ended, a few minutes later the class change would sound off, making me literally jump.

Heh… are you sure you didn’t go to my school? We had SO many issues like that, everything from fire doors randomly discharging to horns randomly blasting to major sync issues in which the strobe would activate 5-10 seconds before the horn, or sometimes not at all! At one point in 5th grade, we even had a Simplex tech at our school for about a month continuously.

The Siemens FireFinder XLS system in the school’s west building was acting up so bad that the alarms would go off once every two days (sometimes once every day)! They fixed that, I wasn’t in the building for the most part when they went off but I believe they went off about 9 times in the first two and a half weeks. I reported a couple of them in the Fire Drills 2017 post.

Sounds just like typical 1950s (and possibly 1940s) fire alarm systems! The ones “OldSchoolFireAlarms” shows, are jokingly short in duration.

Especially with the fact that it can take longer for the FD to come!

When I was staying at the Embassy Suites in Downtown Denver and the fire alarm went off the first night we were there at 12:00 am mountain time. Since where I live normally is on eastern time, it felt like 2:00 am since I had yet to adjust to the time difference. Luckily it was voice evac so I didn’t get my ears blasted with some ear-piercing horn :lol:. Although I did remember to grab my glasses so I didn’t fall down the stairs. Lol. Strangely the elevators didn’t recall during the alarm as some people were calling them to their floors during the evacuation. There was no fire and there was some renovations going on in the lobby so dust might’ve tripped it (or some stupid person decided to pull the alarm). It was a 4100U system with addressable TrueAlert speakers and speaker strobes and TrueAlarm smokes (the ones in the rooms were on sounder bases, but they didn’t activate, only the remote speakers in our room went off, so lucky for me I didn’t have to worry about waking up to a shrill piezo). Instead I woke up to a female voice saying the default evac message with the code 3 tone afterwards. I practically ran down the stairs and tripped (I forgot my shoes and was barefoot) and managed to scrape my foot on the concrete stairs and was bleeding on my way down. Luckily the fire department came quickly and turned off the alarm so we could go back inside. On our way back in one of the employees thought of a quicker way to get back in: go through the trash and garbage garage room to go through an employee hallway to get to an elevator to the lobby. Not only did it smell disgusting, but garbage got stuck on my hurt foot so I was worried it was gonna get infected although I washed it when we got back upstairs with soap (we all did after walking through the trash room…that was super gross, and we all said we should’ve just stayed with everyone else and waited forever to get an elevator back to our floor instead of taking the ‘shortcut’ through the trash room to the employee elevator).

Fire departments are prohibited by law to reset fire alarm systems, only the building owner is permitted to do so.

Really? I thought they had to be the ones to silence and reset and it could only be done with the FD in sight? I think that’s how it is in Ohio but I could be wrong…but I think it is since the FD has to come to our school for every fire drill. But in this case I think hotel management did it once the FD said it was safe to go back inside.

This varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

At my former school, fire drills always happened at random. Neither students or teachers knew they would happen. They would always be scary, but one time, after the school’s EST Genesis’ were replaced with EST Integrity horn strobes, our whole class was in shock. We all jumped at least a few inches out of our chairs when the alarm sounded. :lol:

Why would they replace Genesis horn/strobes with Integrity horn/strobes? Aren’t Genesis’s newer than Integrities? I figured that Integrities succeeded the 792 which succeeded the 892 which succeeded the Adaptahorn.

Geneses are also single gang, how did they replace with integrities? (Unless they had trim plates)

I just want to know why a company would replace any horns with their predecessor in the first place. I don’t think I have ever seen that happen so its weird. I’ve heard of new-old stock because my high school did that with 9838s and U-MMTs but never replacing old horns with the horns before them.

My first experience was in Kindergarten. A Fire drill was that day and I was in the middle of snack time and some Wheelock 7002ts started blaring like crazy. I had to cover my ears as it went honking like crazy. We went outside and about 2 minutes later. We heard the bell to go inside. I was like :shock: About a couple years later in 3th grade. We where in the hallway going to lunch when EST integritys went off.Everyone was like :shock: . We Ran like CRAZY down the hallway. We all stared pushing on the door. We got outside and sat down on the sidewalk.But about 6 minutes after we got outside. The fire alarms didn’t shut off. We where like “What the heck?” Then a fire engine raced down the hill like it was going to hit the school. They raced into the main office in in there was a Simplex 4010. Then they got on the intercom and said there was a problem with the panel. I still am scared of fire alarms but they are cool. THE END

This isn’t that bad, but this Is my story. When I was in first grade I was in the restroom. For some dumb reason I didn’t turn the light, and a few moments later the alarms went off. It wasn’t bad or loud, it was only a strobe, but for some reason that strobe put a deep fear within me that still remains to this day. To make things worse, throughout the rest of that year the horn strobes were on temporal high volume, so it was an interesting year in elementary school with Gentex commander 4’s on high volume straight over our heads.