# The Fire Alarm That Cried Wolf: A Rant about Idiot Security Guards (long) **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [November 25, 2005, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fire-alarm-that-cried-wolf-a-rant-about-idiot-security-guards-long/332677 "2005-11-25T12:15:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![BoBettie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4af34b/32.png) [@BoBettie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BoBettie)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2005, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fire-alarm-that-cried-wolf-a-rant-about-idiot-security-guards-long/332677/21 "2005-11-27T06:28:24Z")
I find this interesting, because for years I bitched and complained about my old hospital and their constant “fire alarm testing”. I don’t know why, but seriously- nearly every single day at least once, the alarm would go off, the lights would flash- the whole nine yards. A few minutes later (sometimes quite a while), they would stop and there may or may not be an announcement about what that was all about. Once I walked IN to the hospital through the front entrance- the alarms were going off. the lights were flashing, and everyone was going on about their business like it wasn’t even happening. The front security guy didn’t stop anyone, didn’t say what was up- nada. I finally asked, since I didn’t want to end up stupid and dead. He just shrugged and was like “hey, whaddyagonnado?”. Sheesh. If there were a real fire, no WAY would anyone ever evacuate. ---
**Author:** ![danceswithcats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9e8a1a/32.png) [@danceswithcats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/danceswithcats)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2005, 8:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fire-alarm-that-cried-wolf-a-rant-about-idiot-security-guards-long/332677/22 "2005-11-27T08:45:38Z")
> [@BoBettie](#): > > I find this interesting, because for years I bitched and complained about my old hospital and their constant “fire alarm testing”. I don’t know why, but seriously- nearly every single day at least once, the alarm would go off, the lights would flash- the whole nine yards. A few minutes later (sometimes quite a while), they would stop and there may or may not be an announcement about what that was all about. Once I walked IN to the hospital through the front entrance- the alarms were going off. the lights were flashing, and everyone was going on about their business like it wasn’t even happening. The front security guy didn’t stop anyone, didn’t say what was up- nada. I finally asked, since I didn’t want to end up stupid and dead. He just shrugged and was like “hey, whaddyagonnado?”. Sheesh. If there were a real fire, no WAY would anyone ever evacuate. Which underscores the problem with defective alarm systems-they condition the occupants to ignore them. Yes, that’s a foolish behavior, but if the root cause of the problem (defective system) isn’t corrected in a timely fashion, expecting people to do the right thing becomes increasingly difficult. If you really want your sleep interrupted, wait until the time when somebody like me boots in your apartment door and shouts “FIRE! GET OUT!” Nothing upsets us fire people like getting a radio call of “Police on location reporting confirmed fire” but when I pull into the complex, only a few tenants are outside. At that point, all resources from the first one or two trucks are devoted to getting people up and out of the building. ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2005, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fire-alarm-that-cried-wolf-a-rant-about-idiot-security-guards-long/332677/23 "2005-11-27T16:40:57Z")
> [@robby](#): > > There was an interesting article in _Time_ magazine a few months ago that explored how people reacted to crises, such as airplane accidents. The people who tend to survive crises are those who plan their actions in advance, such as mentally rehearsing the path they’d take to the nearest exit. How exactly does anyone know whether or not the dead people mentally rehearsed their escape routes? The dead are notoriously unreliable when it comes to reporting on their pre-death thought processes. ---
**Author:** ![Pythian\_Habenero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a6a055/32.png) [@Pythian\_Habenero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pythian_Habenero)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2005, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fire-alarm-that-cried-wolf-a-rant-about-idiot-security-guards-long/332677/24 "2005-11-27T17:27:02Z")
…A lot of the people in this thread seem to be wasting a lot of energy telling me how stupid I am for not evacuating immediately upon the start of the alarm. Forgetting for a moment the building’s fire evacuation policy, I still don’t have to worry; the easiest way out of my building for me is off the balcony, across the roof of the swimming pool, and down a tree, and there really isn’t a conceivable way for fire to block a big empty expanse of gravel without plenty of very loud noises to announce its presence. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2005, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fire-alarm-that-cried-wolf-a-rant-about-idiot-security-guards-long/332677/25 "2005-11-28T06:48:27Z")
> [@Pythian Habenero](#): > > …A lot of the people in this thread seem to be wasting a lot of energy telling me how stupid I am for not evacuating immediately upon the start of the alarm. Forgetting for a moment the building’s fire evacuation policy, I still don’t have to worry; the easiest way out of my building for me is off the balcony, across the roof of the swimming pool, and down a tree, and there really isn’t a conceivable way for fire to block a big empty expanse of gravel without plenty of very loud noises to announce its presence. Loud noises such as the gravel roof collapsing? :dubious: I still think you fail to appreciate how quickly a small fire can become a very large fire that cuts off exits and produces asphyxiating and blinding smoke. That’s kind of the whole point of fire alarms. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2005, 7:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fire-alarm-that-cried-wolf-a-rant-about-idiot-security-guards-long/332677/26 "2005-11-28T07:42:14Z")
I burning your…apartment complex? ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2005, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fire-alarm-that-cried-wolf-a-rant-about-idiot-security-guards-long/332677/27 "2005-11-28T07:45:12Z")
> [@Otto](#): > > How exactly does anyone know whether or not the dead people mentally rehearsed their escape routes? The dead are notoriously unreliable when it comes to reporting on their pre-death thought processes. I don’t know about that. Should an actual fire ever occur at **Pythian Habenero** ’s apartment complex, we know his pre-death thought processes: “I knew it couldn’t possibly be an actual fire…I would be better off going back to sleep”. In any event, the information from the article was based on research from various studies on how people (and rats) react to crisis situations, as well as interviews with survivors of disasters. Here’s the article: [How to Get Out Alive: From hurricanes to 9/11: What the science of evacuation reveals about how humans behave in the worst of times](http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,1053663,00.html) A couple of excerpts: > [@](#): > > In the 1970s, psychologist Daniel Johnson was working on safety research for McDonnell Douglas. The more disasters he studied, the more he realized that the classic fight-or-flight behavior paradigm was incomplete. Again and again, in shipwrecks as well as plane accidents, he saw examples of people doing nothing at all. He was even able to re-create the effect in his lab. He found that about 45% of people in his experiment shut down (that is, stopped moving or speaking for 30 sec. or often longer) when asked under pressure to perform unfamiliar but basic tasks. “They quit functioning. They just sat there,” Johnson remembers. It seemed horribly maladaptive. How could so many people be hard-wired to do nothing in a crisis? > [@](#): > > Mac McLean has been studying plane evacuations for 16 years at the FAA’s Civil Aerospace Medical Institute. …He is convinced that if passengers had a mental plan for getting out of a plane, they would move much more quickly in a crisis. ---
**Author:** ![JSexton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/96bed5/32.png) [@JSexton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JSexton)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2005, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fire-alarm-that-cried-wolf-a-rant-about-idiot-security-guards-long/332677/28 "2005-11-28T19:54:02Z")
> [@Otto](#): > > How exactly does anyone know whether or not the dead people mentally rehearsed their escape routes? The dead are notoriously unreliable when it comes to reporting on their pre-death thought processes. Well, you can interview survivors who found their own way out of a crisis. You can also interview survivors who were rescued from otherwise fatal situations, as opposed to those who escaped on their own. I think you can extrapolate to the dead pretty well from there. Also, reconstructions of the scene will probably reveal some bodies that were pinned in wreckage, and some that appeared to simply roll over and give up for no real reason. Personal anecdote: A few years ago, as I was approaching an intersection, a car turned in front of another and they collided. I pulled over immediately and ran over to the wreck and started assisting, as did one of my passengers. A minute or two later, we were joined by the other two occupants of my car. Later they said that they were literally paralyzed with indecision, watching Scott and I run over and help. It took a while to get their bodies moving. I can only assume that something similar would happen if were were in a plane crash. ---
**Author:** ![lezlers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/258eb7/32.png) [@lezlers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lezlers)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2005, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fire-alarm-that-cried-wolf-a-rant-about-idiot-security-guards-long/332677/29 "2005-11-28T20:35:48Z")
Shit, at least the OP’s security guards give you any information whatsoever. The fire alarms in the complex I live in have gone off three times in the past 4 months. The first time was in the middle of the night (there’s a rant somewhere around here I wrote while going slowly insane by it, actually) and I was in a panic thinking I was going to burn to a crisp. Until I noticed not one single, solitary other resident was evacuating, which seemed rather odd. So I called the fire department. They didn’t seem too concerned. Went back to sleep. Half hour later the building manager was pounding on my door. In the middle of the night. Why? To see if the smoke detector was working. Whatever. Never did get any notice that it was a fake. A month later the alarm goes off again. This time in the middle of the day. I call the building manager. “oh, the fire department is on its way to disengage it.” Great! Are they disengaging it because it’s a _false alarm or are we going to be engulfed in flames in the next 10 minutes??!!_ Jesus. Then, just two days ago it goes off again. Now I’m beginning to see why no one evacuates when the sucker goes off. The building managers don’t even let us know if it’s fake or not, I guess they don’t bother since no one evacuates, because the damn thing is always going off for no reason. Vicious cycle, it is. ---
**Author:** ![Futile\_Gesture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f05b48/32.png) [@Futile\_Gesture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Futile_Gesture)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2005, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fire-alarm-that-cried-wolf-a-rant-about-idiot-security-guards-long/332677/30 "2005-11-29T12:26:06Z")
> [@Pythian Habenero](#): > > If it ever turns out to be an actual fire, I’m presuming that the security guard will have the wits to announce it as such. Meanwhile, I’ll follow the “stay in your apartment” direction. So why do they bother with a fire alarm system at all? Why don’t they just say “When there’s a fire the security guard will announce it.” Save everyone all the bother with this alarm nonsense. After all, a security guard knows exactly what’s going on in every corridor, room and cupboard at all times. Far better than any smoke detector. And its his job to be an expert in risk analysis. :rolleyes: I know it sucks living in student accommodation, what with students eternal fascination for the humour of false alarm. But in any large building I’ve been in the policy is quite clear. Fire alarm goes; you get out. Even if you know it’s a false alarm. Even if you know it’s a test. Any ‘usual practice’ policy that doesn’t follow this risks lives and a whopping great big legal action if the worse happens. ---
**Author:** ![xbuckeye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9e8a1a/32.png) [@xbuckeye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xbuckeye)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2005, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fire-alarm-that-cried-wolf-a-rant-about-idiot-security-guards-long/332677/31 "2005-11-30T02:26:35Z")
It could be worse, there’s an apartment complex around here that catches fire every few months…at least your alarms are false. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fire-alarm-that-cried-wolf-a-rant-about-idiot-security-guards-long/332677.md?page=1)