Stupid Alarm

At around 2:45 p.m. on Wednesday, November 19, a fire alarm started going off at Fahrenheit, a mid-rise condo building located on the 1000 block of Island Avenue. Nearly a dozen residents evacuated the building.

Although it was discovered to be a false alarm, the building maintenance person was unable to disarm the system. Soon afterward, homeowners as well as ground-floor retailers became annoyed.

“This is really loud and irritating,” said a retailer who had the alarm blaring in his store. “It is turning my customers away. I was concerned at first, but now I just want them to fix it.”

A fire engine appeared at the scene around 20 minutes after the alarm began, and firefighters were informed of the malfunctioning alarm. As firefighters performed a sweep of the building, the maintenance man asked for help in disabling the alarm. A fireman was seen trying to assist but then was overheard saying, “That’s out of our league.” Firefighters then cleared the area and left within a few minutes. However, the sound of the alarm was not silenced until almost 4 p.m., when an alarm company support team arrived to turn it off.

A lady standing outside of her second-floor balcony to avoid the noise inside her home said, “Good thing I didn’t bother coming downstairs. It wasn’t a real fire, anyway. I didn’t want to bother with packing my things and getting my cat.”