Power Outage Craziness

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Published 2016-09-21

A power outage occurred at the apartment some time early afternoon which caused the generator to kick in. Since the generator is old it apparently only could power half of the building so only the kitchen and bathroom electricity was working while the bedroom wasn't working at all and the living room had very little power. The maintenance room started smoking and smelling like burning plastic which caused the fire alarm to go off so the maintenance man had to reset it. When the generator started up again the fire alarms went off again but the low power caused the fire alarms to make noise more rapidly and eventually went to a strange soft clicking noise until it went off completely. The fire alarms led to the fire department coming over to deal with the "fire" the alarms reported.

All Comments (21)

@Sylvite. 5 years ago

3:05 SO MUCH FOR GETTING THIS SODA!!
@Ronnocbot 2 years ago

2:53, the woman trying to buy a soda cracked me up lol.
@notyoung 4 years ago

There are advantages to owning even a small house and being in control of your emergency power.
@harlequindrums 6 years ago

Wait a second I think the classics were trying to sleep!
@mikuhatsune2314 7 years ago

The spectralert was going like crazy!
@salvinderkaur2389 6 months ago

0:00 power went crazy and out 2:30 some have some not (also not good for this) and 2:32 fire alarms went off because there’s a fire when there’s a power outage in the building.
@fanawb 5 years ago

The generator might have been trying to start, but couldn’t under the load of all the ac units so it may have shut itself off to prevent damage to appliances OR the generators collector rings. Could be.
@Jamestube8439 5 years ago

The elevator was probably in fire service so it didn't accept the call.
@sethhorst6158 3 years ago

The thing with the fire alarm loosing power and acting weird towards the end of the video is definitely a sign that the backup battery from the system's panel is not doing the job of effectively with providing backup power for the alarm system which seems unsafe for if an actual fire ever happens during a power outage.
@mikuhatsune2314 7 years ago

The spectralert classic was going off weirdly
@MIW_Renegade 7 years ago

The emergency light was like "u gonna let meh come on or not"
@chronically.advocating 2 years ago

Not really a power outage, but rather a brownout or power sag. This happens when you lose a leg of a 3 phase system, lose a neutral, or if already in a power outage a generator not supplying adequate voltage. In which case incandescents will work, but only dimly, and the AC panels will light up but be virtually useless. Flourescents and large LEDs will not light because they both require 120v coming in, and any heavy duty motor (compressors, heaters, large 3 phase ventilation fans) wont work at all. Small fans may work, but if they do it'd be only at a very low speed, and you're right about the fire alarms they will sound with low voltage, normal voltage, and no voltage due to backup power supply but they cant cope with fluctuating voltage.
@bamccarthy8661 6 years ago

The Spectralert's parents were probably siblings. Enough said.
@billybassman21 3 years ago

The building lost one of the power phases. This happened at my old job years ago.
@harlequindrums 4 years ago

0:01 that's a kenmore elite air conditioner
@Whirlpool4594 9 months ago

if i was in a power outage i would scream
@thundersonic342 5 years ago

The Fire Alarm Is A SpectrAlert Classic.
@ironmatic1 7 years ago

I wonder why the panel didn't go into battery backup with that little power. The strobes coun't even flash!
@nicodo123 5 years ago

The alarms appear to be being powered with AC power, which causes them to chirp like that.
@cvalenx 4 years ago

5:05 Big issue, Low battery in fire alarm control panel is a Safety hazerd