Another Smoking Hot Wichita Falls Wok Up Call

In all the years at my previous Texas location I never set off all the fire alarms. As of today I have now done so twice, within a year, at my new Texas location.

Both alarming incidents have been Chinese food related.

The first occurred a couple months ago. I had turned the wok heating unit on high, inserted some oil into the wok, and them went to another room to attend to something else.

When I walked back to the kitchen I instantly saw flames shooting out of the wok. I moved fast and removed the wok from its heat source. And then compounded the problem by pouring flaming oil into the sink.

Pouring flaming wok oil into a sink had a sort of explosive effect.

Soon after the explosion I was able to put out the flames, but not before enough smoke had been generated to set of a half dozen real noisy fire alarms. I quickly opened windows and doors and then one by one killed the fire alarms. Some of the alarms have a button, such as you see above, which one holds down to shut it up.

Literally shut it up. Four of the alarms in this place turn into the robot on Lost in  Space, robotically repeating  "WARNING WARNING WARNING EVACUATE TO A SAFE  PLACE WARNING WARNING WARNING" over and over again. Four alarms in verbal warning mode at once is pretty much an annoying cacophony.

Pushing the shut up button turns the message into something less dramatic, like "You are turning off the fire alarm. Are you sure there is no danger?" Or something like that. It happens so fast it's hard to remember, and I don't feel like starting a fire, whilst holding paper and pen, to get an exact quote.

Two of the alarms do not have a shut up button. To shut them up requires yanking them from the ceiling and pulling the battery.

With today's incident there were no flames, just a little smoke. I was peacefully stirring a wok full of various vegetables when suddenly the nearest fire alarm went off, followed by the others. I quickly removed the wok from its heat source and opened windows and doors and began the shutting up the alarms process.

From this day forth I will try to remember to open the window which is adjacent to the woking location so as to not  go through this a third time...