My apartment building’s fire alarm system has gone nuts. It started at 4:30am Sunday morning, with a false alarm that sent us all outside for half an hour while we waited for the fire department to make sure there wasn’t really a fire, and shut the damn thing off. Then, at 8:30 Sunday morning, same thing again. Fortunately it didn’t go on as long.
The fire alarms scared our cats half to death. One of them threw up (we think from the stress) and one hid for several hours after the second fire alarm Sunday morning. We couldn’t find her, and we were near-hysterical with worry that she’d gotten out when we left the apartment. I ended up walking around my apartment building and a nearby park in my nightshirt with a pair of pants pulled on over it, shaking a jar of cat treats. I think several people who were out walking in the park thought I was crazy.
It repeated last night at midnight, and this morning at 8:30. I’m getting really sick of this… :mad:
I can really empathize with that. Last year, we had quite a serious of seemingly random fire alarms going off in our building. After a while, people apparently got sick of them as I was the only person standing outside watching the fire trucks pull up and then later, leave. About two months of this went on. It was really annoying. I saw my caretaker in the hallway and mentioned this to him, and he replied “Oh, don’t worry! He’s been caught now.” Umm, what? 
As it turns out, our building had an arsonist whom the police department was trying to get proof that he was starting fires in the building in an attempt to burn it down.
:eek: I guess knowing really is half the battle.
Man can I ever empathize with this one as well. We had a period at our apartment where the fire alarms were going off ten to fifteen times a week, at totally random times. I figured that maybe there was a short in the system or something innocent. Turns out it was the cretin children that are allowed to be kept in my building. They liked seeing the FD come roaring up and storm the building. I have vowed to catch them in the act and then throw them down the elevator shaft (Ok, only the first part is true, but it makes me really mad :mad: ). This is almost as bad as the mystery people who threw the couch through my windshield, but that’s a story for another time.
It’s that time of year again. Locally, we tend to get the false alarms every fall–the cause is some busy little spider, weaving its web across the photocell of the smoke detectors.
Arachnid, meat Mr. Vacuum cleaner
Last year I stayed at my boyfriend’s apartment one weekend. Over the two days the fire alarm went off six times. The sixth time, the firemen themselves actually disabled to alarm system for his building because they were sick of coming out there. The landlord is pretty unreachable over the weekend, but I bet he had some very angry messages on Monday. There was something weird going on where the heat in the basement was setting off the system. Anyway, it really sucked.
Speaking as a firefighter and fire alarm installer, you folks need to bitch to city hall. The fire service community doesn’t want to squander resources on false alarm response, and we don’t want people to disregard alarms because the alarm has lost its authority in their minds.
Fire alarm systems need to be maintained and tested by properly trained personnel. False alarm ordinances place the responsibility where it belongs-on the owner and alarm company. If your community has no such regulation, then it needs to enact one, before a disregarded alarm turns out to be the real deal and we’re counting bodies.