Well, THAT was exciting! (Parts 1 & 2)

I was just sitting down to write a nice, chatty, catch-up blog post when my smart smoke alarm started talking. It said, "There is an emergency. The alarm will sound. The alarm is loud."  Sure enough, it went off and it was loud. BEEP, BEEP, BEEP. "Emergency. There is smoke in the bedroom."  Then, my networked smart(ass) alarms in the basement, three of them, chimed in. B-B-BEEP! B-B-BEEP! B-B-BEEP! "Emergency. There is smoke in the bedroom-room-room."  I got a notification on my phone there was an emergency with smoke in my bedroom.

So, first I looked around near the bedroom and saw and smelled nothing. So then I waved a towel at the alarm, as one does to disperse whatever is in the air. It kept on BEEPing and warning. I grabbed a step stool and pushed its single big button that was flashing red. The alarm responded with, "The alarm cannot be silenced. Smoke levels are too high. Emergency." BEEP BEEP BEEP. I still saw nothing and smelled nothing and even listened, nothing. I went all over the house, nothing. I brought the stepladder up from the basement. I used it to climb up and poke my head into the crawlspace attic. It was very hot up there, but it's over 90 degrees out, so what do you expect? There was no smoke that I could see by my phone flashlight, and no smell of smoke.  I pushed the button on the alarm again, and again it said it would not turn off.

I was perplexed. I put the dog out in the fenced back yard, stepped outside myself, and for the second time in my life, dialed 911.  Hey, I pay taxes happily to get civic services. I don't want to be one of those people, who disable alarms and safety devices because they know better, and then are sorry. No Darwin Award for me.

That call was also interesting. First question was address. Second question was "Police, fire or ambulance?" I said fire, and then there were a few excruciating moments waiting to be transferred. Started over with fire dispatcher. Address? Nature of the problem?

"My smart smoke alarm says there are high levels of smoke, but I can't see or smell any smoke. It refuses to reset, so I'd like someone to come out and look and make sure I'm not missing anything."

Response:  "Please make sure all people exit the house immediately. We'll send someone out. Phone number? Name? Let's double check the address."

Then, we chatted a bit more. Again, I explained the circumstances, gave the brand name of the alarm, and confessed I had smelled burning plastic when running my ceiling fan a couple of days ago. I shut the fan off, and hadn't used it since. Finally, the dispatcher said they were on their way, she would let me go, but no-one was to re-enter the house before they got there.

So I stood out there, waiting, and went over what I should have done. I have a fire extinguisher, and when I poked my head up in the attic it should have been in my hands. Then, I realized I should have grabbed, at a minimum, my purse and car keys. I had the dog, at least. I stood there and mentally played, "If my house is burning down, and I can run in and grab something, what should it be?"  My paper files, in a wheeled hanging file drawer? My oldest, not-digitized photo albums, armloads of big books in the other bedroom? My computer? (No, the computer has nearly nothing uniquely on it, I store almost everything in the cloud.)  What else could I have done? Since I suspected an electrical fire, turn off the power in the basement? (Going to have to think that one through, I think it's right, except for two things: generally, advice is to leave, not go down to an area where you could get trapped, and how do you problem solve if you eliminate the source of the problem too quickly? So if I actually smelled a problem, flipping the switch might be a good idea except for the risk of going down to do it, but since I was unsure what or even if there was a problem, no.)

After slightly more than five minutes, I heard sirens. I heard them come up the parkway behind my house, turn onto the main road, then approach my street. The sirens were loud, and there was some honking. I stood out in the front, and waved and signaled as soon as I saw them.

They couldn't have been nicer. They poked around, and they used a "thermal detector" in the attic. They noted it was hot (well, yeah) but there were no hot spots that worried them. After checking everywhere, they (and I) turned our attention to how to turn off the alarms.

While my new basement alarms are wired into the house (as now required by code) the one in the bedroom is battery operated. So, we took the alarm down, and removed the batteries (six lithium AAs - they last for years). They waited while I replaced them (with ordinary AAs, will get lithium later) and it ran a test. It did not alert to smoke. All the basement ones also ran a test. So the lead fireman said, very seriously, "Call again if there is a hint of any problem. We'd much rather come back than not. And get that fan repaired or replaced!" He shook my hand and they went on their way.

So now, I'm sitting here sniffing the air regularly. I continually think I've got a smoke smell. I'm certainly not grilling tonight! I worry the wrong type batteries mean the alarm won't work right, even though it tested itself. (The firemen offered me a loaner alarm for the night but I declined.) And I've added even more things to my to-do list:

• Meet with my insurance agent and make sure I'm adequately insured against total fire loss.
• Practice grabbing the fire extinguisher, mock fire it. (I have used them before, don't need a live fire exercise.)
• Think through what to grab if I have to leave. There are not many scenarios besides fire that would make me have to leave (I'm at the top of a hill, no external floods coming), so it's run out the door, really. The dog is most important, after people. Would I grab the gecko? Purse and car keys, most important after the dog.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Note: I hit "save" on the post above, but decided not to publish because I didn't want it to be the first post about being retired. I started another post, but then decided it was dinner time and started cooking. The saga continues:

Just as dinner was nearly ready, I heard the smoke alarm talking in the bedroom. I couldn't make it out, but I knew what was coming:  BEEP BEEP BEEP. There it was again, and the chorus echoing up the stairs from the basement units.

It's really hard to be calm and collected in the face of this urgent, adrenaline-driving noise. With the heart accelerating again, I turned off the stove and I did the surface rounds: no smoke, no smell in the immediate area. I have a great conditioning to evacuate when there is an alarm - several items in my personal history make this urgent*. Not wanting to call out the firemen again, I put the dog outside. I noted the position of my purse and the car keys, by the back door. I grabbed the fire extinguisher and a flashlight. I re-deployed the step ladder, first to push the button to (temporarily) mute the noise, then to push my head cautiously into the attic, flashlight and extinguisher in hand. Geez, it was hot up there! But no smoke, no smell.  Now what? The temporary pause was over and the urgent beeps resumed. I made a complete tour of the house, upstairs and down. Nothing.

I moved the stepladder back from the attic to under the alarm, and pulled the battery-operated device from the ceiling after pushing the button again to silence it. I got out my phone, and checked the app that shows status for all the units. It noted there was a high level of smoke in the bedroom, too high to turn off the alarm - and the beeps started up again, now in my hand. I took the batteries out of the alarm, and after a moment it was silenced. But the app still showed there was an emergency, and the basement units were flashing red (though thankfully silently now).

I was mostly, but not 100%, convinced the bedroom unit was malfunctioning. I didn't want to leave it disabled, because what if there really was a smoldering intermittent thing happening? Then I realized I was set! Due to a mix-up during last year's basement renovations, I had an extra battery-operated smoke alarm unit. It was still in its original unopened box, waiting for the contractor to stop by and get it. (He probably forgot, because it's been months.)  I opened it up, and started setting it up.

This required connecting it to my wifi network, and integrating it with the other smart units in the basement. That, it wouldn't do, because the other units were still saying "Emergency!".  So, batteries back into the old unit, it reset itself to a no-smoke indication (as it had done when the firemen were here), and then I was able to set up the new unit. I took the batteries out of the old unit again. It turns out the new unit needs some drilling and anchors to be installed permanently, so right now it's sitting on the top of the stepladder near where it will go permanently. But it's actively sensing, and not finding any smoke. So I have peace of mind.

I resorted to the internet, looking for tech support for the units. It turns out, mine is one of the oldest units made, and it had reached the end of its useful life. Conveniently, a symptom of its end-of-life cycle is to make false reports of smoke. And, apparently, to pass the self-test I ran with flying colors. Don't you love technology?

I am incredibly drained from the several rushes of adrenaline. Dinner was none the worse for sitting on the stove a while, but it'll be early to bed tonight. I'll be protected, and I'm certain I'll not sleep through any alarms.

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* My home town high school caught fire during a school day, back in the 1960s. As I was told the tale, many classrooms did not evacuate immediately because it was exam season. The corridors filled with dense killer smoke, and many people were trapped, and some passed out from the smoke. While there were no fatalities, dozens of students and teachers were taken to hospitals all over Long Island for smoke inhalation, and several were injured while jumping out of windows or trying to catch those who jumped. This was national news, and led to the rapid installation in schools across the country of fire doors on stairwells and long corridors. This was recent memory in my high school days. My chemistry teacher had a badly healed broken back from catching jumpers, and my brother's bedroom in the house we lived in had a chain-link fire ladder bolted to the floor by his second-story window, as the house had previously belonged to a family who had children who jumped from the burning school. So any time the alarm sounded, out we went, orderly but always urgently. Then 9/11 happened. So besides the primitive reaction to the loud BEEP BEEP BEEP, all of my training is "GO! NOW!". No wonder I'm exhausted.