False Alarm

Last night, Mrs. Lawhawk and I went to see the Pixar movie Ratatouille at Garden State Plaza's new AMC theaters with stadium seating.

The new theaters are very well done as the seating is quite comfortable and I have more than enough room to stretch out and even cross my legs without hitting anyone in front of me or next to me. Everything about the theater was state of the art, but one huge shortcoming became quite apparent the moment the fire alarms went off right in the middle of the movie.

The moment the fire alarms went off, the movie stopped and the lights came on and people started filing towards the exits. Once into the theater lobby, there was no one around to direct anyone out, but people did find their way to the exits and out into the street. We walked through the mall to get to an exit away from the movie theater to avoid the crush of people, and noted that there were still people mulling about in the mall and security was nowhere to be found. There wasn't security at the exits to the mall either preventing people from reentering the mall.

Once we were outside, we walked back over to the theater extension and saw people mulling about and no one knew what was going on other than the alarm went off.

The minutes ticked by and we didn't see much of an emergency response until we saw the first of several Paramus Fire Department trucks show up at the mall access road entrance. It took them several minutes to navigate to the mall entrance itself because the road was blocked by cars trying to leave the mall and the vicinity of the theaters. Had it been a real fire, that delay could have been deadly.

It was watching that scene unfold that got me real uncomfortable. The mall security did not react as I hoped they would to engage in crowd control or to clear fire lanes so that emergency equipment could get to the scene of the incident. Gridlock in the parking lot meant that the emergency personnel was delayed precious minutes.

Going forward, the mall security and management must do a better job of informing the public as to what is going on, and must work closer with emergency personnel to ensure that police and fire equipment can get to the scene of the incident in the mall in a timely fashion. It should do all it can to funnel traffic away from the entrance where the fire department would enter the mall access road and keep the loop road moving away from the scene of the incident.

The situation was eventually cleared and people were allowed to return to the movies, and we were able to pick up where we left off. After resuming the movie, we went to guest relations and they said that as long as you keep your ticket stub, you'd be able to get in to see another movie at any time. That's a nice gesture, but there were no announcements to anyone to that effect. People who left the movies might not know that they're able to get a free movie out of the experience.

We later found out that someone pulled the alarm but do not know whether the person was identified and arrested. Pulling a false alarm is a third degree crime in New Jersey and civil penalties would also apply, including reimbursement of costs for the emergency response or $1,000, whichever is higher.