Evacuation Day?

That’s what came out of yesterday’s Community Meeting, which turned out not to be a management/residents meeting, but a complete snooze fest when Community Manager (CM) started off saying it was a “Resident Safety Meeting”, there was an agenda, with emergency preparedness presentations by representatives from various agencies, and we’d be sticking to topic.

Keeping seniors focused and on topic is like herding cats, but I have to give it to CM that he mostly managed to do so.

From the few cats that managed to get loose, before CM could herd then back in, I learned I’m not the only one experiencing smoke detector hell ─ which leads me to believe the detectors here are defective. Probably because, when in 2014, the current management company bought the property and did what they say was a $4.5 million “complete renovation”, the renovation consisted of using cheap labor to replace old things that worked perfectly fine with cheap new things (so corporate bigwigs could cheap their way into squirrelling away money for their bonuses). Cheap new things that quickly ceased working and which, to this day, is the bulk of what the maintenance guys do ─ run around trying to keep those cheap things functioning.

The cats that interrupted the fire department presenter to say their smoke detectors would go off at odd times were quickly dismissed with “You were probably cooking”.

I wasn’t cooking at 3:15 in the morning, nor was I cooking the other times the beeping began driving me crazy. In fact, the one time I forgot to turn the burner off under a pot, and was so engrossed in needlepoint that I didn’t realize the room had filled with smoke, the detector never issued an alert. LOL.

No matter, I’ve solved my smoke detector problem.

I’m hoping the fire department gets in and sees this while doing their detector check, so I can tell the fire department the detectors are defective and management knows it, before management gets in to do its pre-inspection, realizes I’ve solved my own problem and MacGyvers it back up to hide the problem.

There would have be no point mentioning it at yesterday’s meet. CM would have herded me back in with “We will look into it”, which is what he told me the last three times I told him there appears to be a problem with my detector.

Another thing that came out in yesterday’s meet, which I heard just as I was walking out the door ─ because the meet had run over into 11:20 and I needed to head for the pain cave, was that a flight from the epicenter of the coronavirus was scheduled to land at the Ontario Airport.

WHA WHA WHAT?!

Fortunately, the news this morning is the flight was diverted to the Air Reserve Base.

Good for us, not so good for them, and still too close for comfort, prompting me to cancel Friday’s appointment at the medical center to discuss what if anything can be done about reoccurring gut issues, even though I’ve limited myself to safe foods.

With the appearance of so many signs we're living in the final days (the evil men are flourishing, the fires) and now mysterious plaques, like the new flu and coronavirus, I thought better of putting myself in a hospital setting.

I also won’t be getting my nails done any time soon, because I don’t know which of the nail technicians have travelled to China or have relatives who’ve travelled.

Better safe than sorry.

Before I had to leave the session, we were handed maps of the property indicating which exits we are to take in case of a fire emergency, and told to memorize our exits because we’ll be having an Evacuation Day.

WHA WHA WHAT?!

An alarm will sound, we are to go to our designated spot and wait to be signed in.

Seriously?

Not only does this strike me as unnecessary but, considering the condition some of our residents are in, not possible to pull off.

But so long as the alarm doesn’t sound before I’m dressed for the day, make up and all, I’ll play along.

I’ll be taking my lawn chair and a cup of coffee to my designated location, to watch in comfort what is sure to be a spectacle.