Signs From The Big Smoke
I caught these signs on a recent business trip to Toronto (AKA – The Big Smoke).
The first sign, Crisis Station, was prominently featured on various pillars in an underground parkade at the exhibition grounds.
Oddly enough, the fact that there was a need for a Crisis Station didn’t do much to reassure me on the safety front!
The second sign appeared under the wall mount sprinkler head in my room at the Downtown Marriott hotel. In case you’re having trouble reading the fine print, it says, “Contact With Sprinkler Will Cause Flooding.”
Clearly there’s a story behind this sign – and I expect it wouldn’t have been much fun being there to see the situation played out!
About 15 years ago my family went on vacation to New York. The Howard Johnson’s we were staying out was fresh out of iron and ironing boards for loan to each room. So we wisely decided to hang our clothes in the bathroom so that the steam from the shower would help with the wrinkles. As I was leaving the bathroom after my shower I opened the door, twisting the hanger attached to the sprinkler, and breaking out the wax stick that keeps the sprinkler head from extiguishing the fire.
The results weren’t pretty – the pressue from the sprinkler blew me out of the bathroom, the fire department came, the hotel was completely flooded and had to be shutdown till the sprinkler system was resealed and retested, and the stench of that filthy water in my nose didn’t leave for weeks.
That sign didn’t exist back then – I have to wonder if we were the first, or at least had some part in creating a market for them.