It's 4 a.m. and you've finally gotten into a good sleep after a12:30 a.m. fire alarm, only to be awaken by the blaring sound ofyet another fire alarm. What do you do?
Chances are, if you're a Richardson Towers North resident, youcurse the day you ever moved into the Towers, throw on a jacket andreluctantly head for the nearest staircase.
However, as unusual as it seems, this has almost become aregular occurrence for the female side of the dorm. In fact, ithappened so often last weekend, some residents just stayed insidetheir rooms.
"People were upset," Vella McKnight, a fourth floor residentadvisor said. "We had to key into the rooms. People refused to comeout because they were sleeping. The police officers had to key intosome rooms to get some people out because they were tired of havingto walk up and down the stairs."
There hasn't been any report of fire in the building, butnonetheless, the alarms are abundant, leaving people to speculateabout the causes. Most times, people assume that someonedeliberately pulled it.
Steve Moseley, a technician in the electronics shop of thephysical plant, said one of the alarms was due to an odoreliminating spray that was being sprayed in the hall of the firstfloor.
A malfunction in the device on the first floor was possibly thereason for its over-sensitivity.
Although, normal detectors can be set off by anything producinga strong odor.
"The smoke detectors will pick up things other than smoke,"Moseley said. "And aerosol is one of them."
However, that was not the case Wednesday night, when residentswere forced to wait in the cold for 20 to 30 minutes twice over thecourse of an hour.
Derek Meyers, deputy director of police services said that wasthe first report of an alarm station being pulled that he has seenin a while. Nevertheless, he said any person caught pulling themwill be criminally charged.
Jimmy Brigman, supervisor of the electronics shop, isresponsible for testing all detectors and making sure they meet ULrequirements, a process that can prevent situations like that ofthe towers from happening again.
"It's something we take very seriously here," Brigman said. "Weknow it can be potentially life threatening."
Officials at Fire Station 18, the department that responds toThe University of Memphis alarms, were unable to be reached forcomment.
