By the time I sat up, Paul was flying into Kate’s room.\u00c2\u00a0 He was shouting, but I couldn’t hear.\u00c2\u00a0 It was all too loud.\u00c2\u00a0 What was he saying?\u00c2\u00a0 Something about smoke.\u00c2\u00a0 And… fire.\u00c2\u00a0 A placid voice was booming that word between the whoops and beeps and wails of the endless alarm.\u00c2\u00a0 FIRE FIRE. GET OUT.<\/p>\n
I walked out to the doorway just as Will reached his, groggy and looking panicked.\u00c2\u00a0 Kate was sitting up in her bed, trying to decide whether to cry in fear or indignation from the rude awakening.\u00c2\u00a0 I took both kids back to our bed, showing them with my own hands how they could cover their ears to keep out the sound.\u00c2\u00a0 Will looked conflicted.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Mommy,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he hesitated, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t we leave?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d His shout comes out as a wail.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Do you see any smoke, Will?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153No\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6. but\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re probably okay.\u00c2\u00a0 Daddy is checking the house.\u00c2\u00a0 Let’s stay warm and wait for him, okay?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Or maybe I just grunted and pointed, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t remember.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 We shuffle into the bed, where thankfully the cat has had the good sense not to move.\u00c2\u00a0 We lift him with the covers and slide under his warm spot.\u00c2\u00a0 Kate has both hands over her ears.<\/p>\n
In case you haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t experienced the assault of a full-house fire alarm, let me describe it.\u00c2\u00a0 By code they are wired to all go off anytime one senses danger.\u00c2\u00a0 Each alarm has a different tone, each delivered at a deafening level.\u00c2\u00a0 When combined, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s oddly melodic, with occasional commentary (FIRE FIRE GET OUT) from a humorless voice.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0The sound is instantly overwhelming.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s repulsive enough that after a minute, you start to feel sick.\u00c2\u00a0 Will has a point; we should leave.\u00c2\u00a0 Who cares if the house is on fire or not?<\/p>\n
Paul has finished his flying around the house, turned on all lights, and emerges in the doorway with a wild look in his eye.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153THERE’S NO SMOKE.”\u00c2\u00a0 He’s shouting at the top of his lungs.\u00c2\u00a0 “BUT I CAN’T TELL WHICH OF THEM CAUSED THE ALARM.”\u00c2\u00a0 His update comes at us in a rush and he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s off again retrieving a ladder.<\/p>\n
Our shotgun house is 23 feet wide, and with the exception of the front room, holds rooms that, at the absolute widest, are 12 feet.\u00c2\u00a0 Add in cabinets or furniture, and getting an 8′ foot ladder through the room, set up, used, and then out again is not particularly easy.<\/p>\n
Especially at 1:30 in the morning.\u00c2\u00a0 On one of the coldest nights on record in the city.<\/p>\n
Luckily, our outbuilding is (still) under construction and the back room (still) holds all Paul\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tools.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, technically it means that the kids could potentially decide to play around with a hacksaw, but (upside!) it also means that Paul does not have to go outside to retrieve a ladder.\u00c2\u00a0 Score one for slow-moving DIY home renovation.<\/p>\n
It takes him just over 20 minutes to disable all of the alarms.\u00c2\u00a0 Disable = remove.<\/p>\n
Thank goodness that this happened while Paul was home.<\/p>\n
Finally, there is sweet, blessed silence.\u00c2\u00a0 The drama hasn’t ended, but at least it’s quiet.\u00c2\u00a0 You can hear echoes of the sound leave our skin as we start to breathe a little easier.<\/p>\n
Paul announces that he’s found the culprit: it was the detector in Kate\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s room.<\/p>\n
I push out the memory of Jenny, a teaching colleague at Michigan, who lost her entire primary source document collection, the result of more of a year’s dissertation research in Ghana, to a fire that smoldered quietly in the exterior wall of her apartment for more than 24 hours before bursting into flame through her wall.\u00c2\u00a0 Surely, I say to myself, Kate’s room is fine.<\/p>\n
Right?<\/p>\n
I’m probably willing to say it’s fine, just to go back to sleep (big day! tomorrow! must leave house at 7am!)\u00c2\u00a0 But I’m married to a responsible sort of guy and he’s not keeping his family in an unsafe house, by golly!\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 He increases the intensity of the inspection.\u00c2\u00a0 He re-checks all rooms.\u00c2\u00a0 He conducts a flashlight search in the attic.\u00c2\u00a0 He even braves the bitter cold to look around outside.\u00c2\u00a0 (In retrospect, this is actually sort of hot, no?)<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, he’s clearly irritated that he cannot identify a reason to cause the alarm.\u00c2\u00a0 (Scotland Yard would be no help at all, Watson!\u00c2\u00a0 We must uncover the true source of the misery!)\u00c2\u00a0 The three of us, Will, Kate, and I, lay in bed listening to the bumping, ruffling, shifting sounds of Paul’s thorough inspections.\u00c2\u00a0 Ever the helpful boy, Will offers his best hypotheses.<\/p>\n
“Mommy, you know, the Addisonhunters are a group of very very very old ninjas who hunt down fires in the deep woods of Chinese….”\u00c2\u00a0 (Hey, at least Will offers comic relief.)\u00c2\u00a0 I do my best to calm the kids, who are still wide-eyed and dazed.<\/p>\n
Finally, Paul is convinced that there is no immediately identifiable danger.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Okay,” he says, holding on to a smoke detector, “I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll start putting them back now.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153WHAT?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m thinking he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s out of his mind.)<\/p>\n
Paul looks incredulous.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to sleep in a house with no smoke detectors, do you?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, right.\u00c2\u00a0 Probably not a good idea, especially tonight.\u00c2\u00a0 Thank goodness one of us considers these things.<\/p>\n
After a half hour of taking down the offending alarms and 20 minutes of searching for signs of smoke, Paul starts the weaving-the-ladder-through-the house game.\u00c2\u00a0 We listen to his progress as his selects a few rooms to re-equip.\u00c2\u00a0 Fifteen minutes later…<\/p>\n
FIRE FIRE.\u00c2\u00a0 GET OUT.<\/p>\n
Yes.\u00c2\u00a0 It starts again.<\/p>\n
The fifth of the five alarms he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s re-installed triggers a repeat performance.\u00c2\u00a0 Oddly enough, we discover five alarms to be surprisingly equal in sound level to the previous 11 (12 if you count the carbon monoxide detector).<\/p>\n
Kate sighs heavily and turns to once again, cover her ears.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Mommy,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she shouts, exasperated, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153is our house on fire AGAIN?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
* Update.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0Neither Paul nor I slept a bit for the rest of the night, and no one slept in Kate\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s room.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Paul replaced the offending alarms (which he discovered had a high false-positive rate) with better-rated units and replaced all batteries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By the time I sat up, Paul was flying into Kate’s room.\u00c2\u00a0 He was shouting, but I couldn’t hear.\u00c2\u00a0 It was all too loud.\u00c2\u00a0 What was he saying?\u00c2\u00a0 Something about smoke.\u00c2\u00a0 And… fire.\u00c2\u00a0 A placid voice was booming that word between the whoops and beeps and wails of the endless alarm.\u00c2\u00a0 FIRE FIRE. GET OUT. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51,67],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5803"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5803"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5805,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5803\/revisions\/5805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}