Courting Disaster!

Last month I told you about the fire alarms and our problems with false alarms. Well tonight we had another. At 9pm. I did what I always do when the alarm goes off. I turned on the TV to the closed circuit TV of the doors. I checked to see if there was anything remotely like smoke or fire in the court yard. I checked out in the hall. No one even bothered opening their door this time.

On the TV, I could see a couple of the gals who had been playing beanbags in the lounge but other than that, nothing. The Fire Department never came - the alarm was turned off from here eventually. There was no fire!

The paragraph below contains facts which are incorrect Those have be struck out. See http://toslayadragon.blogspot.com/2009/02/to-correct-error-of-fact.html

That brings to mind two issues that no one seems to want to talk about or do anything about. The first of these is the false alarms themselves. How do we stop them? Digital cameras were suggested by Mr.Loveridge. With today's technology, it is possible that they are there already and are, for all intents and purposes, invisible to anyone but the technicians, but who knows? If they are, I certainly hope whoever gets the tapes, caught tonight's little prankster. And I hope they throw the proverbial book at him! Just in case you are unaware, these days 'the book' is $80.00 - a real deterrent! And if you read sarcasm into that, that's ok. I wrote it with sarcasm. $80.00 will not even slow them down.

$80.00 for bringing the Fire Department out probably barely covers the cost of running those fire trucks from the Fire Station to here. If those men and women are here chasing a false alarm when a real call comes in and someone dies because they did not get there fast enough, do we tell the victim's family, "Oh well, we're sorry. The Fire Department was chasing a false alarm at 2100 Russell Road but we caught the guy who pulled it and fined him." $80.00! Is that what a charred body is worth these days?

Maybe if you try putting yourself in the place of the victim's family or even think of yourself as the victim who just loses his home and all his possessions but keeps his life, you would start lobbying to have that fine made into something that is more of a deterrent. But this is all academic as we never catch them anyway. Maybe less discussing those cameras and more speedy installation is called for. And maybe a fine that really hurts the jerk who pulls those false alarms wouldn't hurt either.

The other thing about fire alarms in this building is that they go off so often, both false alarms and those way too frequent monthly tests - so frequent that no one pays them any mind. No one moved when this one went off. The Fire Department wrote me to tell me that it is the law that the alarms are tested monthly. Well I say that familiarity breeds contempt. This is true of more than personal relationships. It is true of way too many fire alarms. And at 2100 Russell Road, between the false alarms and the frequent checks, we hear so many fire alarms that no one moves further than the off box on their wall when they hear one. It might have sounded like a good idea - monthly checks - but no one used any psychology in making that decision or they would have known that too much of a good thing is NOT a good thing.

I do not know who made these rules but they really do need to be reworked, fine tuned, hell, any kind of logical tuning would work better than this. If there ever is a real fire in this building, there is going to be a lot of dead bodies. Are the Provincial and City governments going to wait until that happens? And they look so bad no one in their right mind would vote them in again? Or the possible law suits put them farther behind the *8* ball than they are now? Maybe your next stop should be at the Education System’s door - bring Logic back as a subject. It seems to be missing in a lot of people's thinking. Change the law to make it useful, not the useless legislation we have now.

Law that does not work is not good law.

This is not good law!