Fire alarm

What should we do when we hear fire alarm? should we run or just wait for the smoke to reach us. i would say latter one. why unnecessary panic and run like a cat with dog at its tail? I have a funny incident to share. Generally there is fire alarm in your house and in the building. You can differentiate through the sound it emits. Also it used to ring whenever we used to cook something spicy and ofcourse one knows indian cooking...lots of spice and fried things and in winter who will keep the doors open to let the smoke out. so whenever it would start ringing in our house, our job was to stand under the detector and let the smoke out by waving to and fro a big towel underneath the detector. That night i was sleeping early and it started ringing ( around 2 AM) . I knew that it was the building alarm so i had to get out of my room to ofcourse evacuate the building. I came outside my room and what do i see? That the other guy with whom i was sharing my flat was waving a towel to and fro and that too in the dark and also under a light bulb instead of the detector and pardon my mistake it wasn't a towel but his under vest(i guess that was the first thing he got his hands onto). So i said it isn't our house alarm but a building alarm. He said is that right and i said yea and stop waving your vest under the light bulb. Poor guy was disoriented because he was in a deep sleep when the alarm began so didn't know where the detector was and where the bulb was. After getting my bearings i told him that A) Its a building alarm and B) Stop waving towel to bulb.

Sometimes people just ask you senseless questions. Now the question that this guy asked was What should we do? Now that was a toughie...ohh what to do? It wont take a world renowned physicist to come up with an answer and that is we leave the building of course. But going out and that too in -18 degree. Brrr but somehow i didnt want to take any chances. So we got our coat, hat, gloves and all the heavy stuff and went to the ground floor. Fire Marshals were already there and they were checking where fire is. It was surprising to see that only about 20 odd people came downstairs. I mean we were living on 6th floor and there were 11 floors so come to think of it atleast 200 people would be living and i know very few apartment were empty. My friend was calling for the elevator and i said we should go for the stairs. I heard some people leaving through stairs and that caught me in panic. I didnt want to be alone and left out. Now after reaching the ground floor i was annoyed. Didn't people take the fire alarm seriously? I mean no one wanted to die right. They all loved their life and still they were sleeping through all this racket and didnt bother to come down. After waiting for 20 mins we came to know it was a false alarm.

There goes my sleep as i am not a sound sleeper. Also once my sleep gets disturbed then may god have mercy on me and grant me some shut eye. Now i was just drifting to sleep what am i hearing again? u bet its the same annoying insisting fire alarm and now its 3 AM. I got up and sweared real loud. This wasnt happening to me. I have to go to work tomorrow and I dont need this. Again my friend came out and said what should we do? I said i m not going out unless i see some smoke. He said ok he will check it out and i slept on the front couch waiting for him. He said he was the only one with building superintendent. It looked like false alarm and again we slept. At some time again the alarm started ringing and i didnt bother to get out of my bed. I thought well i m not coming out even if smoke comes in. They have to break the apartment and take me.

Motto of the story. Dont be lazy when fire alarm rings. It was an old building and we had plenty of courage to live in it. No body had courage to walk inside the graveyard. Just kidding