Over the past month, the fire alarms in the U building have been going off far more than usual. While PPCHS is no stranger to false emergency alarms, having experienced far too many false lockdowns over the past few years, the number of false alarms for fires in the U building have been unprecedented. 

The first incident was on the day of the PSATs on October 23rd. Just as students filed into their classes to take the test, alarms throughout the school began to blare, their white lights flashing. Students fled from the hallways smoothly, going to their designated evacuation areas, albeit a bit confused. 

Initially, there were suspicions that the alarm was pulled by a student who wanted to delay the test. Sophomore David Gonzalez was one of the many who believed it was fake. “I thought someone pulled it to skip the PSAT,” he explained. However, those claims fizzled out quickly, once the real cause was discovered. 

As it turns out, the alarm was neither a student nor an error in the alarm system. Instead, the air conditioning had malfunctioned and started smoking, triggering the alarms. “The air conditioning has different ducting systems where they have motors that open and close to regulate the temperature in the bathrooms,” explained Mr. Capiro. “One of those [systems] malfunctioned… it was kind of stuck and burned out the motor.” 

Despite there being no actual fire, the Pembroke Pines Fire Department arrived at the scene swiftly; the day’s normal activities were resumed, and students were able to take their PSATs on time. 

However, barely a week later, alarms rang out in the U building once again. Evacuations started for the U building, and as students from the C building walked to the cafeteria for lunch, some of them heard the alarm as well. However, security escorted them back to lunch, saying that only the students from the U building were needed to evacuate. Once again, the fire department came and cleared the building, labeling it yet another false alarm. 

The incident would be repeated only five days later, as another false alarm was triggered in the building on November 4th. Once more, the fire department arrived, confirmed there was no issue, and sent the students back to their classes. The only damage was a 10 minute or so delay in 6th period for students in the U building. Following this incident, there would be yet another alarm on the weekend when nobody was present, setting the total number of fire alarm mishaps to four. 

Four false fire alarms in the span of less than two weeks are certainly concerning, and likely very tiring for the students, faculty, and local fire department. But why is this happening? The answer lies in an issue with the U building’s water pressure: The water pressure needs to be at a very specific level. Otherwise, the fire alarms are designed to trigger. “It has to be right at a specific pressure so that we know if anything happens. So, what happened was it either went too low, or too high,” said Mr. Capiro.

Mechanics went into the system and fixed the poor calibration of the water pressure in the building, so the incidents should have been brought to a close. At least, that’s the hope — five fire alarms in a month would be a bit much.