The building code required that we have smoke detectors wired in on each level of the church. They contain self-recharging batteries in case of power outages, and all are connected, so if one goes off, they all go off. With an ear-drum-piercing triple beep and flashing lights. Which we got to find out yesterday.
My husband was sanding drywall in the balcony, but I guess dust and smoke are the same thing to a detector, and the thing went off. I was sitting in the vestry at my desk, with another of the little dears directly overhead, and when it went off it felt like someone had suddenly stabbed me in the head with an ice pick.
Brio was not amused. He headed for the hills. I stood precariously on my wheelie chair and tried to figure out how to turn the infernal thing off, but there was no button. I popped it off its base, but of course it's hard-wired in and---short of cutting the wires---I couldn't see how to stop it. I also couldn't see it closely because of the constant seizure-inducing flashing.
I abandoned the vestry and found my husband grappling in the same way with the detector in the balcony. He tried cutting off the power main, but the alarms (helpfully possessed of the recharging batteries) continued to go off. We couldn't hear each other to communicate, and he was clearly having no more luck than I. I pantomimed to him to call the electrician who installed the system (I can be a whiz at pantomime in the right circumstances). He went outside to make the call, but the electrician informed him that the system can't be turned off. (!!! What sort of stupid product is that? What, am I to go back to the city never to return and leave it ringing forever?) He advised putting a bag over the alarm. My husband went bravely in to vacuum dust out of the alarm and put a bag over it, and I took poor suffering Brio for a long walk.
I went first to the Fire Station, figuring surely someone there would know how to turn off an alarm. On my way, a neighbour drove by and stopped to lean out her window and tell me the alarm at the church was going off (good to know people are looking out for us!). She also told me where one of the fire fighters lived in case no one was at the fire station. No one was, so I headed for the fire fighter's house. His kind wife contacted him for me and soon Mike came from the shop to meet me.
He very generously walked down to the church with me and made his way to the balcony while I waited outside. He showed my husband how to unclip the wires from the alarm so we could at least get it off the ceiling and take it outside. There he struggled valiantly with it, trying to get the battery out, while the darn thing continued to scream and flash like a temperamental toddler. And then at last my husband found, quite by chance, a teeny teeny switch that cut the alarm off. Cutting it off also turned off the other alarms throughout the building, like cutting off the queen termite and destroying the whole colony. Blessed silence. But whenever they tried turning the switch back on to reinstall the alarm, it continued to go off. So we're not sure how to return it to the balcony and we're not sure if the other alarms are working now, without it. We'll have to figure that out by testing them, I suppose. What a nightmare!
Poor Brio has been a quivering mess ever since, gluing himself to my side and creeping around with his tail tucked and his ears down. Suddenly his safe little world has betrayed him, and he no longer trusts it.
Who invented these stupid things, where you have to physically detach the wires and fumble around blindly for a switch the size of an ant's nose? There should be one on/off switch prominently displayed by the electrical panel so that fire fighters (one assumes there's a fire if these go off) can find it and turn it off. Or a way to somehow let the system know it's a false alarm and it can shut up now, thank you.
On the up side, we have discovered neighbours are looking out for us, and we have a handy fire fighter just down the street.
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