Kerry Wong, a student living in the East Asia Hall (EAH) dormitory in the University of Macau, was taking a shower, when she suddenly heard a fire alarm. She was quite scared and wondered what happened. At this moment, her roommate cried hectically outside the bathroom: "Kerry, I think we'd better run!"

"Oh my God, what happened?" Wong asked. "Ok, at least let me take my laptop." She put on her clothes, got some money and hastily ran out of the door with her notebook. The alarm did not stop for a second, more and more students ran out rapidly. Some of them took the elevator, but Kerry thought that would be very dangerous. So, she shouted, "Don't take the risk of using the elevator, we should go down the stairs."

When the students were gathering in front of the security counter on the 9th floor, the alarm had already stopped. The security manager of EAH Mr. Lau announced that it was a false alarm. Tony Lam, a staff of the Student Affairs Section (SAS) explained: "The false alarm was caused by the smoke of those students who cooked in their rooms and the steam from showers." Lam tried to calm down all the students: "I appreciate that you guys have a good sense of alert, but please remember not to cook in your room, and open the bathroom window to let the steam out first before you open the bathroom door after a shower."

After this sudden panic caused by a false alarm, some students were still very worried. Amy Li, one dormitory student said: "Living in the EAH is based on the trust of the security system of EAH, but what happened today really makes me feel unsafe."

Lau reassured everyone about the safety concerns in EAH. He said: "We have more than 160 fire extinguishers in EAH, almost five on each floor. Furthermore we even provide two fire hydrants on each floor. Therefore I believe we have a wonderful system to prevent a fire accident."

Lam of SAS also explained that the EAH is composed of a main and an annex building. There are 21 floors in the main building which provides 978 beds. In this semester nearly 850 students are living in the dorms, according to Lam. He is more concerned that students do not have a strong awareness of fire prevention. "They even cooked under the smoke detector, which set a false alarm several times in a month," Lam said. Actually SAS has successfully held a fire emergency exercise and a seminar last November. About 251 students who participated in the exercise all felt they got lots of benefit.

"Considering safety, we could not turn off the smoke detector just because it is excessively sensitive," Lam added, "but frequent false alarms can lower our alert to fire accidents. We will think about how to avoid this in the future."

Kerry smiled and said: "I finally feel relieved, but unfortunately what happened today reminded me of the story of 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf', When the boy was eventually confronted by a real wolf, villagers did not believe him because of his previous false cries.. I would really hate it if that would happen to us one day."

<END>