Friday, January 8, 2010

"911, what is your emergency"

Here we are, the coldest freakin' time of the year (I'm speaking in terms of the freezing weather specific to right now, not just January), and I'm calling 911 at 3:00 in the morning. Sheesh.

Fire detectors are wonderful, gotta love them, they save lives...but they sure are loud when they decide to go off because the batteries are low. At first they went off about 10:00, maybe for a minute, then it quit. Okay, I figured that's what it was. Then about midnight, it happened again. Okay, I get it. Shortly before 3:00 (a.m.) they went again and weren't quitting. I flipped on the lights, looked in each room, pulled down the stairs to the attic and checked, and decided to call 911. "I don't think it's any kind of emergency, but any idea on what I can do about this?" Well, a few minutes later this big fire truck with it's blinking red lights pulls up (and of course by this time the alarm has turned off again). Thankfully they listened to my request to not have the sirens going.

I apologized for getting them out of their nice warm beds on the coldest night of the year, and they were gracious. Brought in their little detector and looked around, and determined it was the batteries. But for all of them to go off? Yes, they hard-wired to each other. So, tomorrow I'm off to the store for new batteries (heck, maybe even after I finish this...Wally World is open 24 hours). Then I'll get the tall ladder out of the garage so I can change them all out (10' ceilings are pretty, but sure are high).

Aargh, gotta go, they're going off again. Wally World, here I come!

3:38 a.m. as I leave... Check your batteries people.

4 comments:

Liz said...

you could have called me silly!!!
I remember those smoke detectors though... Remember it beeped for about 6 months. but not sirened.
Remember I told your our smoke detector did that a week or so ago at 4am just after getting the baby back to sleep. No fun to be woken up at night like that! ha

elsie123 said...

After making the Walmart run, I've changed out all but two, and those are the ones at 10' to 11'. I'll have to get the big ladder in for those. It's reduced the amount of beeping, but they still go off just not as long.

The sirens were in reference to the fire truck, and thankfully they came quietly...as quiet as those big trucks can be...just their red lights flashing.

Sigh, always something. :)

Anonymous said...

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Candycane said...

i set off our smoke alarm w/ a dumb candle and i was like FIRE FIRE FIRE!!!
then i blew out the candle and took my meds