Late Night Fire Alarm! Late Night Fire Drill?

Before you begin this story, I should tell you that (if you read this whole post) you can watch the two videos at the end! Cool, huh?

The Saint Paul Seminary recently finished some re-wiring in both the administrative building as well as the residence. In the adminstrative section, it was computer and other technical updates. In its residence, among other things, the fire alarm system was updated.

As part of the process, the seminarians were asked to sign a form indicating that we had read the new fire-evacuation guidelines. Additionally, there was a fire drill announced and scheduled for last Wednesday morning (the picture on the right is intended to show us planning for our fire drill . . . cute, right?).

As usual, all went according to plan. The three teams that worked on our wiring completed their tasks on schedule, and the fire drill went off as planned. The only warning we had of potential problems occured the previous week - while the wiring crews were hard at work, one of the master-alarms was briefly triggerd and the seminary buildings, briefly, evacuated.

Thinking that all our wiring worries were behind us, the seminary settled into "business as usual" mode following our scheduled fire drill.

And there we were . . . it was somewhat past 10pm. I was in my room with another seminarian just about to pray Compline (night prayer) when the master-alarm for our fire-detection system sounded. Alarmed (no PUN intended), we headed for the exit.

And there we were . . . a group of seminarians and priests outside in the cold, dark night - fire alarms loudly ringing. Some seminarians had previously changed into shorts and t-shirts but no shoes, some were already wearing their pajamas, and others were still in street clothes.

This author personally guessed that it was an "unscheduled" test of the alarms to see that the seminarians really knew how to properly evacuate the building in an emergency, but then the University of Saint Thomas Campus Security and the Saint Paul Fire Department quickly showed up - their own alarms sounding - and raced into the seminary to find the cause of the action.

The good folks from campus security alerted us upon their arrival that they did not know why the alarms were sounding. They concluded that there was a "mishap" with the new wiring that has since been corrected; whew! No damage to report.

Check out the videos - courtesy of Deacon Jorge. This author was a little too "alarmed" that he forgot to bring his own camera with him.

Take care, -Jeremy