Has anyone experienced false fire alarms in their apartments? What did you do afterwards?
Around 5am this morning I woke up to the loud smoke detector alarm “火事です” and quickly picked up my emergency bag as I rushed towards the door.
Once outside, as I was about to call the fire department, I realized only the alarm in my bedroom was ringing and there were no alarms in my neighbors’ apartments. I came back and saw that indeed, it was just the bedroom smoke detector. The thing is, there wasn’t any smoke and I couldn’t smell anything burning. Only the heater and the air purifier were turned on, and neither smelled or seemed on fire.
I called the company managing the apartment and got told to turn off the alarm first so I did. They said they’re going to send someone to check as soon as possible (but during business hours so earliest would be in the morning). As I was ending the call the same alarm rang again so I was told to remove the smoke detector altogether.
I was still anxious af!
I thought it’s possible that the fire is in the ceiling or in the walls and I really don’t know if I made the right call [of informing only the apartment manager] so I also called the nearest fire department to report what happened, just in case there’s a SOP here in Japan when it comes to fire alarms that I missed. The one I spoke to seemed bewildered I called to report a possible false fire alarm and said I made the right call to inform the apartment manager.
Google says it is indeed possible for smoke detectors to go bad after 5-7 years. The smoke detector I removed actually indicated it was last replaced in 2015 so maybe that’s that.