Ariana Arghandewal shares her experience at a New York City hotel, where “some kids pulled a dangerous prank..that sent at least one person to the hospital.” And, she says, the prank is happening at hotels all over the city according to the fire department.
- “Kids will sneak onto an elevator to a guest floor, pull the fire alarm and bang on people’s doors yelling “FIRE!”
- “When people open the doors, they spray them in the face with fire extinguishers.”
In her case, there’s security footage of the perpetrators “but they got away through the back staircase.” She warns that if “someone knocks on your door yelling “FIRE”, don’t open it without checking who is there.”
And we’ve seen similar elements to this before, such as:
- prank calls to hotels getting people to pull fire alarms, activate sprinklers and break windows
- banging and kicking hotel room doors as part of socail media challenges (filming reactions and fleeing)
- and spraying people throughout the city with fire extinguishers for social media content. People wind up hospitalized.
I haven’t seen other similar reports that the fire department says are happening ‘all over the city’ but broadly stupid social media tricks and restless youth lead to bad things, and people banging on your door in a hotel aren’t always harmless actors. Last year a naked woman banged onmy hotel room door at 4:30 a.m. and then yanked the fire alarm.
I wouldn’t say ‘don’t open even if the alarm is blaring’ – instead I’d say:
- Know the exits from your room. Read the evacuation map, find the two nearest stairwells, and count doors between your room and each exit. Think about it the same as best practice on a plane. I’m vigilant about this onboard, where my mental model is that a cabin could fill with smoke so I need to know how to get off without seeing – but should be better in a hotel.
- Lock the door properly. Use the deadbolt and security latch. Keep your shoes, phone, room key, glasses, and essential meds reachable.
- If someone bangs and yells “fire” you should look through the peephole, keep the latch engaged if you initially open the door, and call the front desk or even 911 if it seems off.
When you see kids with fire extinguishers in the hallway, don’t engage them..
That’s y’all’s future leaders right there ‘Merica
@John T Buckholder: more ones acting like the current idiot now in the Oval Office.
@Ray: Yeah………maybe some valium might ease that TDS of yours.
“I’ll take ‘Urban Legends’ for $500, Alex.”
@stogieguy7 — Naw, @Ray gets it. And, John is wrong to hold prejudice for an entire generation. These yoots are following after that bad role model. (Besides, please use a generic. No one needs to overpay for name-brand. Diazepam would work just fine. *wink*)
Young punks can get away with stuff like this in soft on crime blue states. Red states don’t tolerate this behavior. Anyone that travels in red and blue states can see the difference.
Unfortunately I live in the super blue state of California. When California couples want to flee the state, they all ask themselves the same question: “What red state are we going to move to?”
@Denver Refugee — What is… that ‘Shakira law’ that everyone warned us about… Those. Fire-Extinguishers. Don’t. Lie.
@OnePatriot77 — Do the kiddos in LA do ‘subway surfing,’ too? It’s an honorary Darwin Award…
@Gary Leff — Unrelated, and you may not be into this, but for anyone who does care, recently on comedian Neal Brenan’s podcast, Blocks, he and his guest, Jordan Klepper, had a pretty funny, brief discussion on airline/hotel points/status in the first 5ish minutes. Don’t worry, @Tim Dunn, apparently, they’re both Delta Platinums (though Neal may be a Diamond, soon.)
Woah, didn’t realize the link would lead to such a big thumbnail. Sheesh. Anyway, its from about 3-6 minutes into that video. Our ‘hobby’ is very much in the zeitgeist. Comedians are often ‘road warriors.’ I totally got the ‘Hilton thing’ they were talking about (lobby ‘mini-markets’ with crap food.) Supposedly, other comedian Bill Burr is against loyalty programs (‘they’ll use it against you some how’). Neal: “I’m very cheap. These mile are not expiring.” (100%, don’t hoard points.)
Gary gives solid advice about emergency exit planning on your arrival. When the hall is full of smoke is not the time to figure out what to do. Scary big cities are not the only place that you might encounter idiot pranksters Be smart
@1990 I grew up in Long Island and know about “subway surfing”. Here in the Los Angeles area I rarely hear about kiddos doing it. Instead, some of them like to take over intersections and bridges and act like Fast and Furious wannabes. Our Sixth Street Bridge re-opened after a $588 million renovation and the kiddos covered it with graffiti and takeover the bridge occasionally.. The bridge is no longer illuminated at night because all the copper cables were stolen from it. Isn’t that nice?
Those wacky kids. What’ll they do next?
@Gary – No kidding about you actually commit the mental energy to memorizing the number of doorways in each direction to the emergency exit at your hotel?
@OnePatriot77 — That Viaduct is epic! I enjoy seeing it when flying into LAX, though I haven’t been up-close, so had no idea about the vandalism (or the lights). *sigh* (This is why we can’t have nice things…)
All I can say is this; Social media is a stinking cancer on society. Humanity needs to put the idiot box (cell phones) down and look at the live/real world around themselves again. These thoughtless, idiotic stunts (for clicks and likes) will end up getting people hurt and or killed…. And for what? A stupid 10 second video the plebs will watch briefly and swipe the the next inane piece of trash. I was born before the infiltration of cell phones, internet, computers and convenience technology and thank my stars I was.
@D Fray — Sure, social media/the phones may be making this worse, but stuff like this has been around, and likely will be around, regardless.
@1990,
Pranks have been around since the dawn of time, unfortunately, social media and the proliferation of cell phones has exacerbated the situation 10-fold with the severity these pranks escalating in a frightening, competitive, way. As screen time has replaced people actually living in the real world, this lunacy will continue to new heights. The youth of today has faced little with respect to consequences and doesn’t think before leaping into the abyss, even if it is at someone else’s expense. Sorry, stepping down off my soap box, but that is the root cause of this stupidity.
@D Fray – I’ve long argued that in the not-too-distant future, people will regularly burn effigies of Steve Jobs for unleashing the Smartphone Plague unto the world…