One school I worked in, the wire for the school bell and the wire for the fire alarm were very close together and sometimes (surprisingly often) the bell shorted out the alarm, which went off. Didn't seem to be anything anyone could do about it short of a major rewiring. You'd get teachers sticking their heads out of their rooms debating whether this was yet another false alarm, a practice run (though we tended to be warned about those) or real, and were we going to act on it... Usually someone said, "Well, I'm taking my class out..." and everyone else followed.
Though the craziest one was when someone phoned a bomb scare into the school (it was at a time when there was a lot of trouble with the IRA planting bombs). We had to keep the kids out while the police came, checked the building... everyone was 100% sure it was a hoax, but they had to go through the motions. And yes, the kid responsible was caught next day - he'd been playing hooky (do you know that term? - truanting) and decided to see what would happen...
But for a long time, every con we went to had an unplanned fire drill; at some point over the weekend the fire alarm in the hotel would go off. Once it was sort-of genuine - the fire, around 10pm, was in a casino underneath the hotel. But firemen had to check out the hotel too although there was no link between it and the casino, even though it was the same building. Several of the firemen pounded up the stairs... and met Batman's Joker coming down. (Before they left, they got him to pose for a photo with them.)
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Though the craziest one was when someone phoned a bomb scare into the school (it was at a time when there was a lot of trouble with the IRA planting bombs). We had to keep the kids out while the police came, checked the building... everyone was 100% sure it was a hoax, but they had to go through the motions. And yes, the kid responsible was caught next day - he'd been playing hooky (do you know that term? - truanting) and decided to see what would happen...
But for a long time, every con we went to had an unplanned fire drill; at some point over the weekend the fire alarm in the hotel would go off. Once it was sort-of genuine - the fire, around 10pm, was in a casino underneath the hotel. But firemen had to check out the hotel too although there was no link between it and the casino, even though it was the same building. Several of the firemen pounded up the stairs... and met Batman's Joker coming down. (Before they left, they got him to pose for a photo with them.)
Ah, memories...