Fire Alarm On the Parking Level

The alarm was set off around 4:16pm. The loud speaker of the building announced it was on the Parking Level B. It kept going for about 8 minutes. The management of our company passed down the words for us to leave for the day. The elevator stopped working. So people from 20 floors started to streamline the stair well. As I got from my 10th floor, the alarm stopped, everybody stopped walking. We waited for about 20 seconds, the alarm didn't come back on and no announcement was made. We started to walk all the way down. Even we were chatting and laughing, I couldn't help but thinking about the tragic moments on 9/11. A lot of people then didn't know it was that serious. I also remembered what happened quite a few years ago.

One summer, I was working during the school vocation in a similar building. The fire alarm kept being set off once in a while. Either it was false alarm or it was a fire drill. One weekend, we were inside the building doing overtime or somehing. When we were about to leave, the alarm went off again. Nobody ever paid attention. We went all the way down chatting and laughing. We got to the parking level only to find the place was swamped by the smoke. We had to run for our life.

When the alarm is on, we better treat it as real until proven false.