Excitement in the dead of night!

Yesterday I had the day off classes.

First, I slept for 12 hours.

Then, Laura and I went to the Warehouse and bought school supplies. I feel much more organized and pinned my birthday cards up on my corkboard.

After that, Liam came over and explained Cricket while we watched India play New Zealand. It was cut short because of rain, but enough had been played that it was decided that India had won.

Laura and I went to the laundry mat across the street, and I had clean clothes for the first time in a while. The night finished with me reading Socrates for Philosophy class.

Then the exciting part started.

At about 2:30 am the fire alarm went off.  My first thought was that I must not have turned my computer off, and I actually opened it up to see why it was making such a ruckus. The fire alarm here is an alarm punctuated by a man saying, “Please stand by for more instructions.” But after standing by for a bit, and given the hour, I decided it probably was a legitimate fire alarm. I poked my head out of my room and saw one of my other flat mates – I won’t tell you which, and you’ll see why later – looking groggily at me from down the hall. “Does that mean we have to go outside?” she asked. She, I, and one other flatmate found our shoes, and me my glasses, and them their keys, and headed out into the hall, figuring that the other two probably hadn’t dawdled so long in the face of emergency, and were probably outside already. It was eerie to go down the stairs in the middle of the night – from the 7^th floor. No windows, lots of people, but none of them moving super fast, all clomping down the stairs, around and around until suddenly we were on the ground floor. The (very cold) fresh air woke me up a bit. (Luckily it wasn’t raining.) Apparently only half of the building was having a fire alarm (presumably there is a fire wall in the middle of the building?). I stood with some people I knew and some I didn’t. One of the guys I didn’t know was talking about how his sprinkler had gone off. There were sprinklers going off? Maybe he’d gotten outside later than me; maybe I’d been in the stairwell when the sprinklers went off in my room; my computer was on my bed; my camera was in its bag on the floor. What room was he in? 6A. Oh dear, that was very close – I’m on 7A, only one floor directly above him.

It then occurred to me that I could only find in the group the flatmates I had come down with: 3 out of 5. The other two weren’t outside. I texted them but they didn’t answer. Either they were asleep or they didn’t have their phones – wherever they were. We thought it was very likely that one of them was at a friend’s place, but the other one… My one flatmate was pretty sure she heard her come in around 2, drunk…

We couldn’t see any fire or any smoke. A rumour began to circulate through the crowd that there wasn’t a fire at all; that some drunk idiot had kicked off their shoes and hit a sprinkler with them.

Eventually they let us back in. Firefighters were still hanging around, running in and out of the building. We went up the stairs. About halfway, I got curious, ducked onto the nearest floor, and pushed the button for the elevator, just to see if it was working. It started to ding, as if it was, but then I noticed that there was a waterfall on the door of the right-hand elevator, and I decided it wasn’t worth it, even if they were working. I ducked back into the stairwell only to realize, as a security measure, you need your key card to get OUT of the stairwell, and I didn’t have mine. Because I’d gone exploring, I’d missed the mass of people, and was pretty alone. I realize now that I could have just texted my flatmates, but at the time I was pretty panicked. Luckily there was a girl holding open the door on the 8^th floor, and she let me in on the 7th.

About that time, we decided that the one flatmate might still be in her room. We banged on the door; nothing happened. So we went back downstairs to find some RA’s, who unlocked the door. She was there, in bed, apparently having slept through the entire fire alarm and evacuation. She more or less responded to the RA’s questions (are you alright? Do you want some water?) mostly by nods. The RA, satisfied that she was conscious, locked the door and started to leave. We flatmates were not so easily appeased, and demanded that she unlock the door again, so we could check on her during the night. You can’t get sued for much in New Zealand, but apparently giving us access to her room was something the RA could get in trouble for, and she had to appeal to the other RA’s as witnesses, and ask our drunk friend if it was alright if she left the door unlocked.

We watched her for a bit – gave her some water and so on, but in the end decided she really was probably ok, and we’d check on her in the morning.

The next morning she was fine – really hungover, and scared, but fine.

The sixth and fifth floors are swamped with water. Those people today are moving into different rooms. I don’t know what happened to their computers or cameras.

The newest rumour is that there were scuff marks found by the kicked sprinkler, meaning someone did it purposefully (though they were most likely too drunk to remember). Another rumour is that the person who did it was not a resident, but a guest.

Call me cynical, but I would not put it past the building staff to start this rumour. That way, the building is not responsible for property loss, but they’re not pinning all the damage charges on some drunk resident either. 

I haven't got much time until Kapa Haka, but I think it's definitely nap time.