(no subject)

[torkell]

Hmm, well I didn't hear the fire alarm this time. But I did hear a couple of security guards wander past my window (the >beep< from the walkie-talkie gives it away rather), and about 10 minutes later I heard a couple of big diesels, which turned out to be a pair of fire engines going back home.

When will they learn to cook with the kitchen door shut?

Comments

[pewterfish.livejournal.com]

Approximately thirty seconds after Never, I'm afraid. Did you ever hear about the lightning strike that hit East Slope while I was living there?

[torkell]

No, didn't hear about that. What happened?

[pewterfish.livejournal.com]

Hehehehehe...

Well, it was near the end of the Spring term, IIRC, and everyone in the flat got to bed late. There was an almighty thunderstorm early the next morning (to the point that it woke me up about six am). As I was sat there at my PC, further sleep being denied by the rolling thunder, there was a mighty sizzling *crunch*, and the display on my monitor danced for a moment. I had just enough time to think "wtf?" before the fire alarms started ringing.

All of them. Every alarm in East Slope.

Everyone filed out in their PJs and binbags, in the forlorn hope of not getting wet in what was by now fairly substantial rain. The firefolk turned up and used their key to reset the alarms. This state of affairs lasted all of a second, before they went off again. They eventually had to be powered off at source, and the kitchen gas supply turned off so that we hopefully wouldn't start any fires before the system was repaired.

Later that day, we found a charred, blackened patch on the ground right behind the highest flat on the hill. AFAIK, the fire alarm control circuitry (housed on the wall of said flat) was pretty much slagged and had to be replaced.

It was, as you can probably guess, a great deal of fun :)

[torkell]

That must have been one hell of a thunderstorm to do that (given the lightning rods all over the place here). Probably a somewhat dodgy fire control system as well, if it was putting out enough of an electric field that it was a strike target. Just be glad it didn't hit a power feed, as that would probably have slagged everything plugged in. I know someone who was using their PC in a thunderstorm without a surge protector, and managed to kill the PSU, CPU, motherboard and probably stuff like the graphics card too for good measure.

Hmm, this reminds me of the time when a friend 'tested' a fire alarm by emptying half a can of deodorant into the smoke detector. At, oh, 1:30 am or something like that, just as everyone was staerting to go to sleep (IIRC I had just turned the light out when it went off). This was at the 6th form orientation away thingy, and the place we were at had a fire alarm system, but the teachers didn't know how to reset it (and the system didn't call the fire brigade either). So we had to wait about 15 minutes for the system to reset itself. At least we didn't have to go outside.
There's other fun from there. We did most of the seminars and stuff in a sorta hall that was just the other side of the road there, and there was a floodlight on the outside. Apparently, turning that flood on managed to pop the breaker a few minutes later.
Oh, and one of the room windows literally fell out, and smashed on an open window from the floor below. (This is the building that was scheduled to be basically ripped apart and rebuilt just after we left. It was still unchanged two years later)