Fire Alarm Gone Haywire

I have always been grateful for fire alarms. I am sure they have prevented many house fires and saved many lives. However, what I am not grateful for are unruly fire alarms that go off for no apparent reason. This is the experience I had this weekend while preparing a rather simple meal.

I have never started a fire in the kitchen before (yet) so fire is not always my biggest worry in the kitchen. I was cooking a delicious Asian meal of lo mien and fried rice so I had two of the stove tops going with two pots of boiling water.

Yes there was a bit of steam, but it was just steam. So while I was waiting for my noodles and rice to cook, I decided to make a quick phone call.

I was just chatting on the phone when all of a sudden, the fire alarm started blaring. I jumped and nearly dropped the phone and ran into the kitchen to find… nothing. Nothing was on fire; in fact, there was no smoke, only steam simmered out of my pots.

“What is going on?!” I yelled as I frantically ran through the apartment, trying to find a way to stop the fire alarms. There are fire alarms in every room, and of course they have flashing lights, so the entire apartment was flooded with lights and sounds.

I ran into every room, trying to turn on fants to get rid of whatever would have triggered the fire alarms. Problem was, there was no smoke anywhere and nothing should have triggered the alarms. They were just going haywire.

So, for four minutes I ran around trying to fan away non-existent smoke. I don’t know what is worse, the fact that my fire alarms are so sensitive and my cooking sets them off or the fact that the firemen never showed up and if there were a real fire, I would be toast. Literally.