Bit of excitement in our building this night! At 01:45 the building fire alarm goes off. Then 15-20 minutes later we finally see the fire rescue truck and a pumper truck leisurely meander around the block to the front of our building (Our building takes up most of the width of a block. On the Eaton Avenue side is a main entrance for government offices and court rooms; on the Clandeboye Avenue side is the main residential entrance. The fire garage is about half a block east of our building on Eaton Av. Our suite faces Main Street.) So they I go out on the balcony to see them quietly and leisurely with only lights coming west down Eaton, sedately make the right turn onto Main, and just as unhurriedly turn right onto Clandeboye. So the Rescue truck is still in the lead with the pumper truck following. The rescue truck stops in the middle of the road beside the back alley where the trash bins are between our building and the Shell gas station, leaving the pumper truck just barely off of Main and on Clandeboye right beside the Shell blocking their Clandeboye access. No idea what good they figured on being way back there?! So finally about another ten or fifteen minutes later they shut off the alarm. Some time shortly after that I go back out in the balcony to see what the trucks are up to, I see an RCMP cruiser coming leisurely north down Main Street calmly as can be and juuust before it tuns the corner onto Clandeboye (still blocked by the trucks, mind you) then finally the lights come on. (Weve had a lot of false alarms here, which is why no one in the building is inclined to be in a hurry to evacuate) So some 15-20 minutes after the alarm has been shut off, then we hear this hammering on the doors that almost sounded like they trying to break it down right then and there. So I holler out out Yeah, Yeah, Im coming, Just hold your horses! (wish I coulda seen their expressions in response to that! ;) ) I go open the door, and yeah, Im expecting to see fire fighters. Three RCMP officers! And yes they want folks to get out of the building. Apparently theres a bunch of smoke on the fifth floor. (were on the third of a total of six stories, only the top four of which are residential. And its a concrete building.) To cut out the rest of the less interesting details, The fire trucks finally left around 4am. I found it somewhat amusing, however, how while the emergency personal did what they were legally and liabley required to, one rather got the sense that they werent getting anymore excited about it than the tenants. They are, after all, equally familiar with all the false alarms here. They were likely as surprised as the rest of us that there actually was smoke (and likely fire) at all. Albeit, clearly a small one, since no one bothered to actually ensure that the building ever actually got completely evacuated. We never actually got down the hall. By the time we finally got out our suite door and locked it, those that had left when the police came banging on doors, were already coming back and told us theyd been sent back in! I recon our poor little budgies were far more befuddled than anyone with first the loud racket of the alarm interrupting their sleep, and then when that was over, they just get to settle back to sleep only to find theyre blankets are getting pulled off and Auntie is suddenly chasing them around their house trying catch them and stuff them in their smaller travel house and being wrapped up in that and bounced around. I imagine the poor little ones were quite perplexed, wondering what on earth their little world was being turned inside out and upside down for in the middle of the night. After all, theyve heard that noise many other times, and no one interrupted their world! I wont be a bit surprised if they are a little out of sorts today, anyway!
Posted on: Fri, 07 Mar 2014 13:08:17 +0000
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