The Girls' First Fire Alarm!

"*The floor! The floor! The floor is on fire...* no really, we need to come check your dance room to make sure the floor isn't on fire!"

So the girls got to experience their first (thankfully false) fire alarm the other day, however the end scenario was kind of funny... so I thought I would share!

I do Zumba classes on Mondays and Wednesdays, and the girls go to child care in the building while I'm at class as well. Monday seemed like a normal day, until 15 minutes before class was to be over - the building fire alarms started going off. The instructor went to turn off the music (because in Zumba we get LOUUUUUD) - and everyone started looking at each other to figure out what was going on, a few seconds later someone finally asked if we should go out in the hallway to figure out what was happening... and asking which exit door we should use.

At that point, my Mommy instincts kicked in and without turning around to respond to anyone I scooped up my things (conveniently placed next to the room door - I think I may subconsciously take this spot in the room for exactly this reason - I dunno??) and was the first person out of the classroom door running towards the stairs to get up to child care. I could hear the instructor behind me saying, "Well, I guess we're going that way." (LOL... also funny after the fact!)

I wasn't necessarily in a panic, but I was on high alert - because we didn't know what the situation was and whether it was a false alarm yet or if something was in fact going on in the building that we needed to evacuate from. I high-tailed it to child care, where a number of parents were also there getting their kids - and workers were trying to figure out how many arms they had available to carry children out whose parent hadn't gotten up there yet. I scooped up Cupcake, who I spotted right away and happened to be right near the half wall near the entrance to the child care room...

Then I realized that Peanut was still in one of the swings in the baby area! One of the workers behind the wall was going over to get her out right as I was coming into the room - and I pointed to Peanut as she pulled her out of the swing, letting the worker know she was mine & I would take Peanut as well to  free up her arms to gather up other children. All in all, it probably took less than 2 minutes to get up to the child care and get the girls out of the building... so I think that it went well as an alarm for preparedness.

I grabbed our stroller that was parked right outside of the child care - while holding both girls- and wobbly pushed everything & everyone outside, thankful for other kind gym members that were holding the exit doors open for people carrying children out.

We stood outside for a minute, I helped the girls get their jackets on and stowed them away in the stroller... after only a few minutes it was determined it was a false alarm and we could go back inside. After getting back into child care, I waited for a minute because I knew they would want to do a head count to make sure all of the kids were accounted for - and gauged the girls' reaction to the alarm... (The visual alarm system was still going off, but the noise part was silenced.) They both seemed fairly disinterested in the whole alarm thing and more preoccupied with getting back to playing with toys and/or getting back to their swing. So I re-signed them in and went back to class to finish up the end of class.

After being back in class for only a few minutes into the first song, maintenance arrived with a ladder and plunked it down in the middle of the room! (While we are still dancing.) He started fanning the fire alarm in the ceiling, and shook his head saying, "Yep." As he got down off of the ladder, he jokingly told the instructor to take it easy on us - because it was OUR ROOM that set the fire alarm off!

Apparently, a combination of the heat from the room and dust in the fire alarm vent had triggered the alarm and they had to get up there and clean it out during the class following ours. So I guess the Zumba ladies are so hot... we set the fire alarm off!

Hope you enjoyed our little anecdote from Monday... thanks to my hubby for telling me I should share - it is kind of a funny scenario for the girls' first fire alarm!