Modern fire alarm systems seem to be designed to spare you a fiery death by killing you quickly with a heart attack (brought on by the 300dB screeching pulses coming simultaneously from every alarm in the house).

Or perhaps my (in hindsight extreme) reaction to the alarm was just that it was my first as a Dad. (In university days, false alarms barely roused me from sleep.)

Well as long as I’m never sleeping again, I guess it’s a good time to start reading up on why fire alarms might go off for no apparent reason and see what can be done to fix it.

I don’t think it would have been a CO alarm, unless a vent line in our furnace has a leak. (The system is entirely sealed to the outside.)

An errant bit of plaster dust flying about the basement, perhaps?

Since all the alarms are linked (by building code), we really have no idea which alarm actually triggered the event.