UPDATE 11 – At this point we’re in the downward spiral of charging our Treo from our laptop (seriously, no electricity or broadband for over an hour now – we’re suffering here – this is like Survivor… or post-Katrina New Orleans). So we’re going to conserve some battery life and open up a book or something. If anyone figures out what we did to make the LAFD ground us for the afternoon, feel free to let us know.
UPDATE 10 – More interesting technical analysis from the creepy intercom: “If you have a remote, cordless phone it might not operate properly”. We don’t even know what that means? Are they overwhelming the spectrum with walkie-talkies? Because that’s one potential problem for cordless phones. The other would be, you know, the TOTAL LACK OF POWER in the building.
UPDATE 9 – The LAFD has just come over the intercom to inform us that we “may notice a momentary loss of power to the building”. Umm… we’ve been without power (and have we mentioned broadband) for the last couple hours. If they’re under a different impression, that’d be nice to know.
UPDATE 8 – Since it appears that no local news stations are deigning to cover this non-emergency which is preventing us from getting either electricity or light, we’re going to have to do our best impression of what the local news coverage. So while we have nothing new to report, but here are some pictures of fire fighters where before there were no fire fighters.
UPDATE 7 – Were it not for noise canceling headphones to drown out the LAFD’s constant interruptions, we’d get nothing done around here. Anyway, here’s the most recent message: “There is no fire, there is no emergency. Please remain on your floor and in your rooms”. Funny, those aren’t two sentences that you usually hear together. Anyway, here are some pics. Because you earned it. First one is 2nd and Hope being totally shut down for the lack of emergency, and the second is a reflection of two firetrucks on 3rd and at least one on Grand.
Sorry for the weird angles and the lack of anything substantive – but, well, apparently we’ve been grounded by the LAFD.
UPDATE 6 – High-rise apartment building in the middle of downtown’s Culture District totally shut down. Residents ordered to stay in their rooms. Local news coverage? Nada. If they’d stop coming over the damn intercom, maybe we could use this time productively for sleep. Alas, not so much.
UPDATE 5 – We’re strongly considering having
UPDATE 4 – If they turn that siren on one more time… Who the hell put an intercom in our room? Is this a safety issue? Can we just suck up the risk and have it removed?
UPDATE 3 – We’ve just realized that there’s a very real chance that either our Treo or our laptop will run out of batteries before power is restored. That presents the very real possibility of being trapped in our room with no Internet access. Honestly, we’re not sure we can take that.
UPDATE 2 – There’s that intercom again: “This is the LA Fire Department. There is no fire, please remain on your floors and in your rooms”. Which we’re happy to do, but the bastards won’t turn off the SIREN that they’re playing over the intercom.
UPDATE – In an interesting turn of events, the siren on this new intercom just came on. Sirens are – what? Good? Bad?
ORIGINAL – There are several, several police cars and fire trucks outside our apartment building. Normally, we’d shrug it off and go back to sleep because, honestly, what do we care? But just now the LA Fire Department came on the intercom inside our studio (which we didn’t know existed – seriously, there’s an intercom in our roof) and literally ordered us to stay on our floor because “the emergency is being taken care of”. Google News has nothing on any emergency, so we’re curious about what emergency is being handled so well that we’re not allowed to leave our floor.
Previously:
* Public Security In Los Angeles Sucks Disgracefully
* Some Real Emergency Response In Los Angeles
