I Feel Safe

Normally I don't discuss my job, but I'm going to make an exception today. I was at my desk today towards the end of my day when I received a phone call from one of my co-workers who was outside of our building. She told me that there were 4 or 5 fire trucks outside our building and that the building was on fire. I was completely obliviously to the situation. Generally, when I don't hear a fire alarm, I assume the building is not on fire. As I was telling my equally clueless colleagues about the situation, one of them told me that the procedure in our building is that is if there is a fire in the building only the floor on fire, the floor above it and the floor below it have their fire alarms go off. I am not sure how that is a good policy, especially if the first floor was on fire. The best part of the whole situation was that as I was heading out of the office, one of my other colleagues was returning to her office. She informed myself and others in our office that she had tried to get back in the building a few minutes ago, but the security people would not let her enter the building. She had only been let back into the building after the fire department had gotten the situation under control. So let me get this straight, you're not letting people back into the building because of a potential fire, but you're not notifying everyone that is still in the building that there may be a potential fire. Maybe I'm just an idiot, but I fail to see the logic of that. Sadly, this was not the first time when logic was not applied to our safety. A few months ago, there was a bomb threat against our building and several other buildings in our area. People in the other buildings were notified of the situation and told to leave. Were we even told that there was a bomb threat against our building? That would be a no. Makes me really wonder what would happen in an actual emergency situation.