“And today, I’m running on only three hours of sleep, no thanks to the alarm system!”
On Friday, October 8, we had not one, but two evacuations. The first one was a fire drill, at 1 AM. I was still dressed at that point, and contemplating going to bed. But it seems that many others had the same thing going on, because the majority of people that I saw in the driveway out in front of McGraw-Long were fully dressed. I only saw about three people in pajamas out there, and a few more in “lounge-wear”, as they call it. The second alarm happened at 7 AM. This one was more of a pain than the first one, because we knew that it was not a fire drill, but most likely not a fire (and it wasn’t, because I’m writing this from within McGraw-Long). I was awake for this one as well, but only because I have to get up at 6 AM for my 8:00 Kinesiology course. When the alarm went off, I was in the middle of putting on my pants. So… I quickly picked a shirt, put in on, grabbed my keys and my JAC card, and my bookbag, and went out with the rest of them (7:00 is my usual time to leave on these days, so I just grabbed my stuff when I left). I ended up staying with everyone else just to see what was going on, until time caught up with me, and I had to go on to D-Hall, to eat my breakfast, and drink copious amounts of coffee, just to wake up. At the time of this writing, the cause of the alarm is unknown. When the JMU Police put it up on their site, you can find out about it here.
Date posted: October 12, 1999
Notes: Turns out that the real reason for the first alarm was that unknown people yanked a heat sensor off the ceiling. Note it was not a planned fire drill. The second alarm was caused by a faulty smoke detector. Additionally, two more alarms went off the same weekend, caused by the same faulty smoke detector. The detector was replaced, and the false alarms stopped.