Twenty-six Years of False Alarms and Then…

January 8, 2025
Jack R. Noel

It was one year ago when the fire alarm awakened the 70 or so residents of my apartment building. At about 1:30 AM, I was awakened by the loud alarm and recorded voice repeating, “There has been a fire alarm reported in the building. Go to the stairway and leave the building. There has been a fire alarm reported in the building…|”.

My personal reaction was “Phuck this” because this has been happening periodically for the twenty-six years I’ve lived here. But while this was still going on there was the sound of someone thumping on my door and I could hear there were people thumping on the doors of other apartments. I still wasn’t alarmed so I took my time getting dressed.

When I finally did reach the stairway there was the sound of water and other commotion. I carefully descended to tthe ground floor and there stood a fire fighter with his back to the stairs. I yelled “Hello!” And he stood aside and let me out into the ground floor hallway where I made my way to the main entrance and exited into the parking area at the front of our building.

There, I joined the other residents who were already huddling under blankets. I began to gather hints from them as we watched the fire fighters coming and going in and out the building, no one was rushing, they seemed almost bored.

After a few minutes the organized into a line with all holding up blankets as the EMS people wheeled a covered figure…