In the UAE, (and primarily Muslim countries in general), the weekends are Friday-Saturday. So last night was the equivalent of a Sunday in Western countries, the day before the school/work week starts. And as such, my classmates and I were studying, and then going to sleep. I had finished a lot of my work on Friday, and I was actually working ahead in the week (things get crazy, fast, here). At about 10:45-11ish I decided to go to bed.
I was almost asleep when I heard a buzzer and an automated voice. It was too short to actually hear what it was saying, but my roommates and I sleepily got up and went into the hallway, along with most of the other girls from our floor. Our RA assured us that it was a false alarm, and that if something was actually going on it would keep going (it didn't even get through the message once). Since we knew that humidity/etc sometimes sets them off and that they were working on the system, we went back to bed.
2 minutes later, the alarm, again. Hallway, again. Once again it stopped, but going through the full message, which is along the lines of "There has been a fire detected in the building. Please standby for further instructions". It stopped for a minute, and then went on again. And kept going. But a call from public safety said that there wasn't an issue. So again, we went back to bed, resigned to the fact of sleeping through a fairly noisy alarm.
Not like we weren't used to this, because if you leave the door to the staircase open too long, it beeps. And continues to beep until someone shuts said door.
But then we got a call from another floor saying that they were evacuating the building. We evacuated, walking down what seemed like endless flights of stairs (While I am only on the 8th floor, there are mysterious floors between 1 and Ground, so it is a lot more).
A general generalizing observation- in the countries I go to outside of North America, it is always too hot with too many people for the time of night that it is. (Probably 12:15AM by this point)
Got to hang out with all of my schoolmates and teachers a ways away from the building. Someone brought a guitar, and I finally figured out how to call the US with my phone!
Fire trucks/police/ambulances arrived, and we just waited for information. What was finally determined was that there had been an electrical fire on the 34th floor. This took a while to filter down to us, and in that time, we ended up (all 300 of us), walking to the down town campus because people were getting dehydrated due to the heat. (Around 1:30 at this point)
I can't even imagine what the locals thought of this parade. It is only a 10 minute walk to DTC, but there were 300 of us, in varying stages of pjamas, at 1:30AM.
By 2:30 we got word the fire was out
By 3:30 we got the all clear that it was safe to go back. You can smell some smoke in the elevators/stairs, but that is the extent of it (thankfully)
So conclusion: No class today (which is how I have time for all of these entries), and only 5 hours of sleep. When they announced no classes, you would think they were announcing something earth-shattering. I guess because there are no snow/ice/cold/heat days here, so things like this don't normally happen. But still. For all the talk that this is the world's honors college, everyone seemed really thrilled for no classes (A combonation of being awake and sugar high and crazy at 3AM with everyone, and the fact that a lot of people were still working when the alarm went off) Although it does mean we are making it up next Saturday.
Everyone is safe, and we got an extra day to relax/study. And we made the local news http://www.thenational.ae/thenational/news/uae-news/fire-forces-evacuation-of-nyu-abu-dhabi-students-and-staff
<3
I was almost asleep when I heard a buzzer and an automated voice. It was too short to actually hear what it was saying, but my roommates and I sleepily got up and went into the hallway, along with most of the other girls from our floor. Our RA assured us that it was a false alarm, and that if something was actually going on it would keep going (it didn't even get through the message once). Since we knew that humidity/etc sometimes sets them off and that they were working on the system, we went back to bed.
2 minutes later, the alarm, again. Hallway, again. Once again it stopped, but going through the full message, which is along the lines of "There has been a fire detected in the building. Please standby for further instructions". It stopped for a minute, and then went on again. And kept going. But a call from public safety said that there wasn't an issue. So again, we went back to bed, resigned to the fact of sleeping through a fairly noisy alarm.
Not like we weren't used to this, because if you leave the door to the staircase open too long, it beeps. And continues to beep until someone shuts said door.
But then we got a call from another floor saying that they were evacuating the building. We evacuated, walking down what seemed like endless flights of stairs (While I am only on the 8th floor, there are mysterious floors between 1 and Ground, so it is a lot more).
A general generalizing observation- in the countries I go to outside of North America, it is always too hot with too many people for the time of night that it is. (Probably 12:15AM by this point)
Got to hang out with all of my schoolmates and teachers a ways away from the building. Someone brought a guitar, and I finally figured out how to call the US with my phone!
Fire trucks/police/ambulances arrived, and we just waited for information. What was finally determined was that there had been an electrical fire on the 34th floor. This took a while to filter down to us, and in that time, we ended up (all 300 of us), walking to the down town campus because people were getting dehydrated due to the heat. (Around 1:30 at this point)
I can't even imagine what the locals thought of this parade. It is only a 10 minute walk to DTC, but there were 300 of us, in varying stages of pjamas, at 1:30AM.
By 2:30 we got word the fire was out
By 3:30 we got the all clear that it was safe to go back. You can smell some smoke in the elevators/stairs, but that is the extent of it (thankfully)
So conclusion: No class today (which is how I have time for all of these entries), and only 5 hours of sleep. When they announced no classes, you would think they were announcing something earth-shattering. I guess because there are no snow/ice/cold/heat days here, so things like this don't normally happen. But still. For all the talk that this is the world's honors college, everyone seemed really thrilled for no classes (A combonation of being awake and sugar high and crazy at 3AM with everyone, and the fact that a lot of people were still working when the alarm went off) Although it does mean we are making it up next Saturday.
Everyone is safe, and we got an extra day to relax/study. And we made the local news http://www.thenational.ae/thenational/news/uae-news/fire-forces-evacuation-of-nyu-abu-dhabi-students-and-staff
<3
