Alarm wails for hours next to retirement home

A council has apologised after a fire alarm rang for more than six hours next to a retirement home on Easter Sunday.

The alarm at Cottis Yard multi-storey car park in Epping, Essex, has sounded on several occasions over the past few months, according to one neighbour.

Another neighbour, Maureen Cannon, 92, who lives in the Bakers' Villas retirement complex, has a perforated eardrum and said she hid in her bathroom to get away from the noise.

An Epping Forest District Council spokesperson apologised for the disturbance, first reported by Everything Epping Forest, saying: "The alarm should not have been going off for as long as it did."

Describing the noise, Ms Cannon said: "It was terribly loud... I suppose that's what it's meant to do... distract you."

Janet Hedges, 78, said: "It does go right through you, because it wakes you up and you think 'Ooh, what's happened?'

"People come in and try and calm you down."

Eileen Kelly, 92, said the alarm sounded for "a long while", adding that she thought it was supposed to indicate an emergency.

"It does affect you because you wonder what it is: 'Why is it going off? Have we got some trouble somewhere?'" she said.

Robert Born, 67, who lives about 200 yards (180m) away on Buttercross Lane, said the alarm had blared "six or seven times" over the last nine months.

"It hasn't got an automatic cut-out. It has gone on for 11 hours continuously once, but normally it's about one to two hours," he said.

He said there had been a "far worse" incident previously when the alarm started late on a Friday evening.

"[Of] course, everyone has gone home from the council," he said.

"The car park is still merrily ringing away at eight o' clock the next morning.

"You can't go outside when this thing's going on, because it's going through your head."

This month, the council took back ownership of the car park from Qualis, a company that it owns.

A council spokesperson said the authority had been "working hard" to fix the alarm system, reducing the number of instances it went off and trying to "respond in a timely manner" whenever it did.

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