FALSE ALARM

I am really not very forgetful, but I did it again. I set off the smoke detector in my apartment. It’s stupid, but I told Martin (our really great maintenance man) that I keep doing it so he will have job security. We all really like him and want to keep him a long time. I set if off so he will have something to do. Many maintenance men have of come and gone and I have only been here three years.

I set it off twice in the first week of Martin being on the job. Then I set if all again within his first month.

You would think this isn’t a big deal, but it is. The alarm can only be turned off from a master control switch locked away that only Martin can enter. He has to be called. No one here has his number, so we have to call the maintenance hotline that then they track him down on his handy-dandy cell phone. At least yesterday he was on the grounds. The second and third time he was off the grounds and it was not during work hours. Once he was with family and the other time I pulled him out of church.

Now the master alarm cannot be shut off until the smoke clears in my apartment so as to stop my personal inside alarm from screaming. I actually caught this problem before the alarm was triggered. I smelled it, jumped up, ran over, turned the exhaust fan back on the stove and throught all was well. No! It was still set off.

The same thing caused my alarm to screech on all four occasions. The first three times I chalked it up to stupidity, carelessness and — lets not get into it. Each time it went off after I finished cooking a meal. I thought I was turning my stove stop top off, but instead I turned it to the highest setting. You would think I would have smelt it in plenty of time. The apartment is small, but sinuses keep me from noticing. This was the first time I caught it before the alarm went off.

There are important procedures to follow when this happens, and it happens often around here. 1) Do not open your door. Initially the alarm is only going off in the apartment where the smoke originates and in the master control room where there is only a beep. In my apartment it is an ear blasting sound designed to make us all deaf. If you open the door and the smoke hits the detectors in the hallways, alarms ring all over the building. Then there should be an evacuation and the fire trucks come automatically. That has happened, but not with me. The irony of this procedure is that no one leaves the building. They go looking for where the problem began. I am sure that if they saw flames they would leave. At least I think they would. Who really knows?

2) One should open all their windows. 3) Turn on all fans. We have one built in the bathroom. I have two other floor models that I quickly put in the windows. It still takes a long time to clear the smoke. In the meantime I was getting a headache, 3) All through the days, others will be asking if you did it, why you did it and then laughing at you, not with you.

Well something different happened after this experience. I told Martin that when I finished cooking my breakfast eggs, I know I turned the switch off. I thought I had done that on all occasions. When I heard the click, I left. Instead of going off, it locked onto the highest heat. Martin and I got playing with the switch and found it to be defective. He is going to change it out. I will have no more excuses.

So there! It wasn’t really my fault and I took all this time to simply say, my smoke detector when off and it wasn’t my fault.” But where’s the fun in that.

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