As a former roving consultant, I've worked in many of the towers downtown. Universally, fire alarms get ignored most of the time by people unless there's a growly firewarden who kicks your arse down the stairwell. Reason for this is simple, too many false alarms.
Worst evac ever was from Banker Hall 39. Quads burned for 2 days after that. Stairwells were stupid hot and humid with the crush of people, and many times you would just stand there not moving at all. Worst of all it was a drill - I could see some of the older people there going into cardiac arrest for that drill.... Not saying that drill's aren't useful, but the risks have to be worth it. Bankers had to be the worst building for false alarms too, perhaps due to all the retail space in it?
Only once in 10 years have I been in an office tower where the alarm was legit - place got hit by lightning and blew out a transformer. Smoky parkade.
My old condo was a haven for alarms for a period when the crackhead got a hold of one of our fobs and would smoke up in the stairwell. The silence button would kill the alarm buzzer in your unit, but not the strobe light or horn in the hallway so really it didn't do much. Not like you could sleep under those circumstance - tried to ignore them but couldn't.
Ignoring alarms is of course, bad, but unfortunately one tends to be conditioned by so many false alarms...
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