Alarmed on Friday the 13th

On Friday the 13th, we woke up at 7am and heard our downstairs neighbor's alarm going off. The alarm wasn't so deafening that you could hear it from outside of the flat, but you could hear it from our place since it was just below. I'm pretty sure the flats next door could hear it as well since houses in London are right next to each other, so they share side walls. We tried knocking on our neighbor's door, but then I remembered that last time I had seen him, he said he would be away for a few months beginning in February.

So there we were: alarm beeping and no idea what to do. We didn't know if it was a fire alarm, carbon monoxide detecter, alarm clock or intruder house alert. At the time, we were a bit worried because it was unlike any beep we'd heard. Aaron thought it sounded like space invaders.

After an hour, we decided to call the non-emergency line. The police came and said they didn't smell any strange odors or see smoke. They could force entry if we really wanted but normally they didn't do that for this type of thing. And if he was away, then his flat would be unlocked (door broken) for the remainder of the time he was gone. The police said they couldn't imagine it going off for more than an hour or two more, so they left.

Immediately after, I finally managed to track down our neighbor's cell number from our landlord. The line went straight to voicemail. Our neighbor lives part time in Barbados, so at that point I assumed he's out of the country and his phone does not work.

By 10am the beeping was still going on. I decided to get out of the house for as long as possible: gym, coffee shop, walk. Before I left, I did leave a note on our door saying "The alarm is not in this flat!" in case a neighbor called the police and they forced entry into the flat... I wanted to be sure they knew which door to break down! I came back to the flat around 3pm and it was still going off. Luckily, I was able to close our living room door and turn on music, so that the sound was barely distinguishable.

Finally, at 5pm I heard some rustling downstairs and went to go investigate (detective Ashley). Turns out, our neighbor is having some work done on his flat while he's away, but he forgot to give his alarm fab to the worker. The worker ended up finally turning the alarm off (although I could still hear it faintly ringing in my head).

How long would you last with a neighbor's house alarm going off? For us, it was 10 hours. YIKES.