Today was a day filled with disaster alarms. They didn’t affect my teaching much though.

First, during my fourth period class, a voice blasted over the intercom that we were all about to die. All my students quickly crawled under their desks to await their doom. Well, that’s how it sounded, and that’s what happened, but after the earthquake warning and the desk crawling, nothing else happened. A few minutes later, my students emerged from under their desks and we continued with class.

I thought it might have been a drill, but later confirmed there’d been an earthquake somewhere.

Then, during my evening class, the fire alarm started ringing. I went out to check and found a bunch of people playing with the alarm box, but no one seemed to be in a hurry to get out of the building. One guy was coughing though, but it didn’t seem to be from any kind of smoke or a from a gas leak. I was then told to go back to class and await my doom. I announced to my students that we were probably all dead and they laughed and continued doing their assignment.

Eventually, the staff completed their quick inspection of all the floors and determined that we were probably not going to die. After 10 minutes or so, someone found a way to turn off the alarm.

An hour later it went off again, but then was quickly turned off and I think it was another test.

Although I’m glad we all ended up being safe, I find myself less trusting of alarms, and that probably won’t end well in the long run.