SC and the fire alarm

[mattm04]

This is a video of a fire alarm going off at a mall and no one is paying attention to it. For anyone who has had to deal with alarms at your work where SC's are involved, you too will wand to take that container of food from her and throw it across the mall.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orO4FpujWaI

[Evil Queen]

How is it that no one cared?! Hello, FIRE ALARM!

My Gawd, it would be wonderful if all the stupid people were like lemmings and would just run off a cliff.

[ditchdj]

I think what it comes from is we've all been through so many "fire drills" in our lives growing up in school and I have personally witnessed false fire alarms from faulty equipment or somene accidentally setting them off in businesses that it's now almost human nature to just watch for smoke first then hit the road.

[Andara Bledin]

I have been through about 30 false fire alarms. I'm not counting drils.

I know of one instance where there was an actual fire, but no alarm at all.

Yeah, I think it's pretty safe to say I'm a bit desensitised. Although, even after all that, I will still investigate enough to determine the likelihood an alarm is legitimate.

^-.-^

[crazylegs]

Knowing that fires double every 30sec, that smoke is a killer and that people stampede, I do not stick around in a building with a fire alarm.

And she was eating with her mouth open. Ugh.

[Jack7957]

It's possible that the alarm company was doing a test. Some places I've worked at they announce before hand that the alarms will be going off, but there's no reason to be alarmed.

[marasbaras]

Good grief, close your mouth when you eat lady!

I agree with the others. School fire drills completely desensitize you.

[JLRodgers]

Back when I was in college my dorm was getting a number of "restaurants" opened up in our building (actual money-paid restaurants, kind of like a mall's food court). When they were building it alarms went off at least once a day....everyday....for like two months! To make it worse it frequently happened at early morning (6am). And it was freezing to below zero outside (so picture like 200 people outside shivering in nightgowns and boxer shorts). After the first week people started sleeping through them or just not even noticing when they were going off. We actually said "can we burn it down? Please? We're freezing!"

But in the case in the video, I'd almost think they were told "please ignore the alarm" since it didn't seem anyone was really looking around.

[Boochan]

Thats Classic.
We've only had two complete evacuations (one a drill, the other a suspicious package) before at my mall, and a lot of people don't comply. It generally took us a minute or two to get the point that it wasn't an accident (occasionally the alarm will go off about 4 or 5 times, then turn itself off), and that its actually a real evacuation. Main problem was that security didn't isolate the place correctly, so people were still coming in from various entrances and wondering what the hell was going on. That time we had locked up and turned off all power, and we just thought to hell with it, and we and the cell phone store opposite us, we all just went on lunch. Of course, we come back a half hour later and the centre has been open for at least 15mins..

[rvdammit]

Sounds like the alarm runs through a single sound cycle, so a test. With people who knew it was a test.

[Shangri-laschild]

Sounds like the alarm runs through a single sound cycle, so a test. With people who knew it was a test.

Going to have to agree with this as the people in the background looked like they were still serving food and such.

[mattm04]

Assuming this was a test, and it was announced it would make sense. In my expirence this is what shoppers do in the event of a real alarm. Just keep on walking like nothing is happening.

[Trayol]

Last week someone pulled the alarm at my dorm, at 12:15am on a Friday morning. Luckily I don't have classes on Fridays and was still awake so I wasn't too upset. Hopefully, they already caught the drunken idiot who did it. Nearly all of the residents left the building during the alarm, though an RA did tell me that five had tried to barter with him to stay in their rooms. He frankly told them that they could either leave or be written up. They left

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

One of the stores I used to work in was an anchor store for a regional mall. There were a few times I know of where the fire alarms went off and people either just stood around wondering what was going on or just continued shopping.

[Difdi]

Between an extremely acute sense of smell, and the ability to, literally, handle a crisis while sleep walking, I tend to sleep through fire alarms.

The one time I was asleep and it was not a false alarm, I snapped awake smelling smoke, checked it out and found there was actually a fire, caused by my roomie being an idiot while cooking (the schmuck panicked over a grease fire and did nothing but call 911 while letting the fire keep burning) and put it out.

Lord and Lady, but I do love halon. Ten times the kick of dry chemical, extremely accurate spray and when you put something out with halon, it stays out. I hung up the extinguisher, and was just getting back into bed...when the fire alarm went off.