At 0230 the tones sounded for the third time. We padded down to the truck and headed for a manufacturing plant that had an alarm sounding. Per the alarm company it was a manual pull alarm on the second floor.
On scene my captain and I headed in to check things out while my engineer stayed with the rig. We met up with the night supervisor who gave us a very confused look. He hadn't heard any alarms at all and it was business as usual.
The supervisor led us through a maze of large rooms toward a staircase. He informed us that there was not a "second floor" per se but that there were several platforms above some of the equipment that might be considered a second floor. Reaching the metal staircase I couldn't help but notice that his idea of a second floor was 4 stories up. So climb we did.
Up top we found access to several machines. There was only one manual pull station and it hadn't been used. There was no alarm sounding and everything seemed to be running as it should be. So we headed back down the stairs and onto the next area.
We repeated that process several times. Almost an hour later we cleared from the call. Now I was completely awake and covered in sweat. Getting back to sleep wouldn't be easy.
After changing my clothes and reading for a while I was finally at a point where I thought I'd get back to sleep. I turned off my light and curled up under my blanket just in time for the tones to go off again.
The factory had another manual pull alarm sounding.
This time we checked everything and then had the supervisor call the alarm company to take the system off line. This afforded us just enough time to get a nap in before it was time to get up for the day.
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