Fire!

I was going to put a picture with this, but I can't do that at work and I won't be at home for a while, so too bad. You'll just have to enjoy the story as is.

Monday night, at 6:45Pm I was at checkout and I noticed flashers reflecting off the glass of the doors on the Irving Blvd. side. I hadn't heard that anything was going on, but then, it's not like I would. I thought maybe some old person collapsed again, so I sent Kristina to see what it was. She said it was a couple of fire trucks; no ambulances or cops. I wondered what was going on, but since the fire alarm wasn't ringing, I figured no big deal. About 6:55 then, the alarm went off. The emergency gates in front of the elevator closed and a few people were leaving the building. I was still at check-in helping a patron and nobody had yet made any announcement about the alarm. Kristina came back and told me Linda had something about it probably being a false alarm. I wasn't too sure of that, because although the alarm system itself is buggy, that only results in the sensors reading wrong. It's never actually made the fire alarms go off before. After about a minute of the alarm, Loretta decided to take it upon herself to announce that it was a false alarm and people didn't have to leave. So some people started coming back and acting normal. Then, about 2 minutes after that, we finally got a call from upstairs telling us to announce that people needed to leave the building. Kristina made the initial announcement, but nobody could hear her, so another minute after that Rachel made the announcement again. At this point, it was 7PM, so we all headed outside. I told Kristina that if there was a fire there was no way I was letting my car burn, so I moved my car from the underground garage to the big one next door. Then we came back to stand with the crowd in front of the building. It was cold that night and most people were shivering, since they hadn't brought their coats. When we got over to them, I started asking Linda and Loretta what had happened, but they said they didn't know. Mike Kirwan was standing in front of the doors on the Rock Island side, so I asked him what had happened. He said Helen and somebody else had reported a mysterious "burning smell" on the third floor. They got verification from some other folks and decided to call the fire dept. Patty Landers happened to be here that night, by the way. She evidently "took control" of the situation and stood around talking to the senior police and firemen who showed up.

Anyway, once I heard that it was third floor personnel, I understood why we hadn't been called downstairs and told what was going on. I mean, that's their modus operandi. I went back over to Kristina, who'd been talking to John. John then said that he was in the elevator going on break when the fire alarm had rung and consequently he was stuck in the elevator as it kept going between floors 1 and 2 without opening! He said how he got out was by shoving the door open when it stopped at the first floor. He just grabbed it and shoved. Of course, if he'd been told something was going on, he probably wouldn't have been in the elevator, but hey, we're not important enough to know what's going on.

We stood outside for a total of 50 minutes, with patrons coming up and trying to go in. I mean, we were a crowd of about 50 people to start and 20 finally but people kept acting like nothing was wrong. Only a couple of times did people in cars drive up and ask what was happening. Also, in all this time I only noticed 1 person in the 20 minute parking leave. Hmm.

We were allowed back in at 7:50, with no explanation for the burning smell having been found. They did determine that it wasn't an active fire, so they figured there was no danger, as the smell had dissipated. I don't know if there's a lesson to be learned here, but I welcome you to try.