Fire alarms, I have two simple requirements of the damn things: make a helluva noise when there is a fire, and shut the fuck up the rest of the time. The college installed a new fire alarm system last term, apparently the old one wasn’t sensitive enough, and didn’t have enough smoke detectors to meet health and safety regulations. I’m so glad of the new system, it warns us of such things as thick clouds of choking fumes billowing down the corridors. It also warns us of the following things:
[ul]
[li]Someone taking a warm shower, the steam sets off the detectors[/li][li]Someone boiling a kettle[/li][li]Someone spraying deodorant or hairspray anywhere near the detector in the middle of each room[/li][li]The building isn’t no-smoking, but the system warns us if someone does smoke[/li][li]Lots of fires are, I’m sure, caused by frying pans, but we seem to get a fire alarm every time anyone cooks anything[/li][/ul]
So, every morning this week, at between 6:30 and 8:30, I have been awoken by the wail of the fire alarm, and head to get up, dressed, and go stand outside in the morning frost, waiting for the fire brigade to arrive to check the building.
To the designers of the alarm system: Go design one that can fucking cope with people’s everyday activities without getting all pissed off all the fucking time and making us stand outside freezing. Some of those people outside this morning were wet from the shower and wearing only a towel while they stood outside for 30 minutes with frost on the ground. Going off every morning because people are having showers or cooking is NOT an acceptable number of false alarms. People are taking longer and longer to leave the building, this does not contribute to safety, but, the thing that pisses me off even more is that every time your piece of shit system detects showers or kettles or deodorant or cigarettes or cooking and makes everyone go outside, the fire brigade have to attend, this means that they aren’t doing something useful like rescuing kids from burning houses, or cutting people out of crashed cars, all because someone boiled a kettle here and they have to come and declare the building safe for us to re-enter.
Your fucked up system is causing me and everyone else inconvenience, but worse that that, by going off constantly with false alarms, it endangers the students, and everyone else in the city who have to suffer reduced fire cover as a result of the false alarm here. This is the exact opposite of what your system is meant to do!
The author apologises for the poor quality of this rant, due to the fact that he was awakened at 8:30 by a false alarm and had to stand outside until 9 shivering.
