An Alarming Problem

January 4, 2011

"Do a Good Deed"

"Just Do It"

"Do It Now"

Are you sensing a trend here?  It’s all about what we should DO.  Today’s Bit of Advice is about  something we should NOT DO and how we are a culture of people who DO it anyway.

What is it, you ask, that we should NOT DO?  It’s a two-part Bit of Advice…..

1.      We should not have so many alarms – security alarms, car alarms, cell phone message alarms, alarm clocks, you get the idea.

2.       We should not ignore the alarms that are really important – CO detector alarms, smoke/fire alarms.

I didn’t sleep well last night and that is unlike me.  I can sleep most anywhere anytime I set my mind to it.  Eight hours of sleep is easy.  Ten is even easier.  But last night, around 4am, I heard my husband get out of bed and walk around.  I realized about the same time that a security alarm from a neighboring house was ringing.  Loudly.  Over and over.   Husband went downstairs and stood on the front porch but couldn’t identify which house was ringing the alarm.  So we went back to bed and tried to sleep.  

But where were the police sirens?  Surely people were being murdered in their beds. 

Why didn’t we call 911 to get some help for our poor neighbors?

I’ll tell you why.  Because alarms ring all the time.  And we, as a society, have learned to ignore them.  Home security alarms get tripped by pets, late night tipsy homeowners who can’t remember the code, and weather that blows open a loosely shut window or door.  Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) they rarely get tripped by burglers and murderers.  And we all know that so we just ignore the alarms when we hear them.   (Though ignoring the alarm is a lot easier during the day than at 4am)

How about car alarms in a shopping mall parking lot?  We hear them all the time but do we run over to chase off the thief?  Of course not.

And bedside alarm clocks – most of us have become more than a passing acquaintance with the snooze button.

Sadly, people also ignore the important alarms.  Every year we read in the news about people who are seriously injured or killed by carbon dioxide poisoning in their homes.  Some people have chosen not to install the alarms in their homes.  But too many others simply ignored the alarm when it rang.  Assuming that the alarm is faulty can be a deadly decision.

Smoke and fire alarms are often treated the same way.  We practice fire drills in schools but almost never experience a real fire so we become a bit relaxed in our response to the alarms.  My parents stayed in a large hotel in another city a few years ago.  The fire alarm rang during the night and they moved quickly to the lobby of the hotel to evacuate the building.  They were among only a small number of people who responded to the alarm.  A very small number.  People decided to ignore the alarm with the assumption that it was a false alarm rather than an emergency.  In this case, fortunately, that assumption was correct.

Let’s get rid of some of this noisy chaos that has little effect on anyone’s safety and disrupts the peace and quiet of our world.  Do we really need home security alarms or would a big ADT sticker in the front window be enough?  How about car alarms?  Has yours ever prevented a theft?  On the other side of this alarming problem, let’s try to start giving more attention to the alarms that are really important to our health and safety.

Can we work together on this?

I’d really like some good sleep tonight.  If you are my neighbor with the home alarm that rang last night, please shut it off.  For good.  Thanks!