Early Morning Exercise

Just after I got into work last Friday morning, the fire alarm went off about 7:00 and it announced an immediate evacuation was required.

Daniel, my next-door office mate and I swept the floor because we are both fire wardens, and about 7:05 proceeded to walk down the 21 flights.

The stairwell was fairly quiet but we assumed there simply weren’t many people in the building yet who needed to evacuate at that early hour. The lights on several floors weren’t even on yet which furthered our belief it was a building wide evacuation.

When we exited the building, there was no one to greet us and check that our floor had been cleared so we walked over to our gathering place.

We arrived there about 7:15-7:20 and we announced where we were from and they asked what we wanted. We explained we were part of a fire evacuation but they knew nothing about it. The security guard requested another guard for crown control.

Daniel and I sat alone, except for the crowd control security guard, for about 10 minutes then we headed back to our building where everything was business as usual.
The crowd control guard was funny. He said that he thinks that people only “really” live from ages 5 to 50 – either side of that they are just surviving. I asked how old he was and he said 23 – I have no problem believing that.

As soon as we got back, I immediately went to talk to building security manager and advised what had happened. We were told it was a false alarm (The fire alarm was set off by accident by a contractor who was working in the building. He was drilling into metal that created enough heat to set off the sensor above him) and we could have exited on the 18th floor. I said there was no one to tell us that so we simply followed the protocol for dealing with a fire evacuation.

Daniel and I got back to the building and up to our desks about 7:40 after having our aerobic exercise for the day!!