A Different View

The view of a Sri Lankan studying in America

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Those fire alarms!!

I had never heard a fire alarm ring until I got here. The first time I heard it was about three weeks into my first semester. I was in my room studying when I heard it go off. Never having heard a fire alarm before, I didn't recognize it. I actually thought it was one of my hall mates playing their music. After all, I had heard songs like "chicken noodle soup" and "peanut butter and jelly" and wouldn't have been surprised if this was a song. I ignored it until I heard people running around in the hall and went to find out what was going on. I was told that we had to evacuate the building. It turned out to be a hoax.

The alarm has gone off three times since then that I was around for and each time it was a hoax. I don't understand why they even put alarms in the building. It is a brick building and would not catch fire anyway. The best part though is that when someone actually lit a paper on fire in one of the halls this semester, the alarm didn't go off!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dude,

There's a difference between fire alarms and smoke detectors... Some one has to break the glass for the alarm to go off... Duh!

Which plantet have you been hibernating on?

uboy said...

oops. now i get it. thank you. shows how much i still have to learn!

Anonymous said...

Or it might have been a fire drill, where the alarm is deliberately sent off to practice evacuation procedures.

uboy said...

They promised us it wasnt a fire drill the first time. Dont know about the others.

Anonymous said...

Fires can bring down brick buildings too!!! You may want to consider evacuating the next time you hear it.