Residents of an Estevan apartment complex got woken up by an alarm other than the one on their phones on the morning of Friday, January 24. At about 6:30 in the morning, a smoke detector going off on the seventh floor of their building sent everyone to the muster point, and brought out the Estevan Fire Department. 

"Crews arrived on scene to find no visible smoke or flame from the exterior building," said Fire Chief Dale Feser. "They made entry to the building and inspected the smoke alarm panel that indicated that a seventh floor smoke alarm was active. Crews made their way up to the seventh floor but did not find any cause for alarm." 

After trekking up seven flights of stairs to find it a false alarm, the fire department decided to sweep the building, just to be extra safe. Finding no cause for concern, they went back to the station and allowed residents back into their homes. Feser was impressed with how quickly they'd mustered, despite the early hour.

"It sounds like everyone did a great job that lived in the occupancy there to get down to the muster area on the main floor," he said. "It's really good when you can see residents are taking a fire alarm seriously and getting themselves to a safe spot so that if we do have to evacuate the building it's just a quick evacuation plan and everyone is all in one spot and accounted for."

Of course, there was a reason the occupants of this particular building were so quick on their feet when it comes to fire alarms. The fire department routinely does preparedness exercises with large buildings, and it so happened that they had been at this very building recently.

"We spend quite a bit of time doing planning in certain occupancies, and I was actually just in this place earlier in the week," Feser said, "just to go over with the residents what to do in the event of a fire alarm activation or emergency. So it was very fresh in their minds at that time. It's good to see our public awareness campaigns paying off."

Feser added it has been otherwise an uneventful week for the department.