Merry Christmas to the Local Fire Department!
Boy! Am I Glad You Guys Make House Calls!
Some turkey in my 45-unit building forgot to clean the oven before putting the other turkey into it and turning it on before he left for the day.
This building is old enough to collect Social Security.
The alarm system does not connect to the fire station. It is close behind the building for age.
We have frequent false alarms due to delinquents and burglars (burglars? Yes. When you leave your apartment, you have to leave your door unlocked so the firemen can get in to check for survivors and victims. Burglars know this).
I'm one of the hall-runners, checking my floor for hot doors and pulled stations, before I head down to the annunciator panel to check the alarm source. It's always a false alarm. Once I was able to nail the kid that pulled it. The cops made me let him go.
This time, no pulled station. Check the panel, and it says my floor. Do hot door check again, sniff for smoke. Nothing.
Fire department arrives. They've got electronic smoke sniffers that can detect smoke the human nose can't. I want one. Yes, I know that that's what my smoke detector is, but I want one I can carry around with me.
Fire guys find the apartment, turn off the stove, reset the alarm. Suddenly, silence! Merry Christmas, guys!
I am so tempted to camp outside the door of the turkey who did this, so I can watch his face when he sees the warning notice from the fire department, the warning notice from the building manager, and his still-uncooked turkey sitting forlornly in his oven, probably never to see the dinner table. The bird-turkey has become an albatross. The other 44 apartments are not about to let him off lightly for ruining their day and panicking their kids, cats, and dogs.
Maybe now the cops will let me keep the next kid I catch just long enough to lead him around to the other residents...
Some turkey in my 45-unit building forgot to clean the oven before putting the other turkey into it and turning it on before he left for the day.
This building is old enough to collect Social Security.
The alarm system does not connect to the fire station. It is close behind the building for age.
We have frequent false alarms due to delinquents and burglars (burglars? Yes. When you leave your apartment, you have to leave your door unlocked so the firemen can get in to check for survivors and victims. Burglars know this).
I'm one of the hall-runners, checking my floor for hot doors and pulled stations, before I head down to the annunciator panel to check the alarm source. It's always a false alarm. Once I was able to nail the kid that pulled it. The cops made me let him go.
This time, no pulled station. Check the panel, and it says my floor. Do hot door check again, sniff for smoke. Nothing.
Fire department arrives. They've got electronic smoke sniffers that can detect smoke the human nose can't. I want one. Yes, I know that that's what my smoke detector is, but I want one I can carry around with me.
Fire guys find the apartment, turn off the stove, reset the alarm. Suddenly, silence! Merry Christmas, guys!
I am so tempted to camp outside the door of the turkey who did this, so I can watch his face when he sees the warning notice from the fire department, the warning notice from the building manager, and his still-uncooked turkey sitting forlornly in his oven, probably never to see the dinner table. The bird-turkey has become an albatross. The other 44 apartments are not about to let him off lightly for ruining their day and panicking their kids, cats, and dogs.
Maybe now the cops will let me keep the next kid I catch just long enough to lead him around to the other residents...
posted by Chimera at 2:19 PM
2 Comments:
Merry almost-not-so-Merry Christmas! I'm glad it was resolved before it became a 4-alarm fire. I'm like you, although I usually stop to put important things in safe places (at one work fire non-alarm, i.e. a real problem, I stopped to gather everyone's disks - yes, I'm that old - & lock them in the fireproof safe before bailing).
I'm glad it worked out okay, and I think a stroll down to the local firehall in the next day or so with some shortbread or beer or combination thereof would go a long way toward getting you your wish. Maybe you could talk them into billing his family? (That's what my daughter's school does. It certainly puts a strain on repeating the offense, if nothing else).
It never actualy got to be a fire of any kind -- just a lot of smoke from the oven that set off the unit smoke detector, which then set off the building alarm.
The local fire department has a station just a couple streets over from me, which is very handy. Those of us who have lived here for a couple of years are on a name-basis with most of the firemen. Super nice guys with senses of humor. A couple of them have joked about moving in here so they wouldn't have to leave home to go to work.
About half the calls to them are rescue calls (no fire alarm there, though -- just 911) for either drug overdoses or stabbings/beatings/muggings. Nice neighborhood I live in. Another local joke is that the trucks don't need a driver -- they just head here automatically, like horses to their barn...
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