The First Monday of The Month

I've been hearing the sirens since High School almost ten years ago. A "Lahar Drill" they called it. The first Monday of each month they'd blare the Lahar sirens to make sure they were still in working order. That way, if the mountain ever erupted, we'd have a way to know giving us half an hour to escape the valley town we lived in, fleeing for higher ground, before the Lahar, a mixture of mud, water, and debris flowed through our town like the river of death and destruction it is said to be.

At first, the sirens were feared by most. The sirens would sound and everyone would rush to the windows to make sure it was just the drill, and not the actual mountain erupting. Many practiced their lahar drills at that time, figuring out the best routes to get to safety in the half-an-hour window we'd have. People began buying more and more emergency rations as if the installment of these drills was an omen that the mountain would erupt tomorrow.

It didn't. Each month the Lahar Drill would sound on the first Monday and would last about five minutes. It quickly became a routine, the Lahar would go off, everyone would glance to the sky looking for dark clouds, and then just shrug, keeping the alarm in the back of their heads. Five years later and people began to ignore it completely. Changes were then implemented making the Sirens louder, and lasting for ten minutes instead of five.

Now you couldn't ignore it, but still, it did no good. People felt more inconvenienced than anything and just dealt with it, forcing it to the back of their heads again while they concentrated on their commute or talking into their phones. Fast forward to now, where the ultimate irony, something I expected long ago, lies. It was the first Monday of the month, the Lahar Drill sounded, I looked at the mountain, gathered my family, and we ran. Ten minutes later and the sirens hadn't stopped.

There were more people running with us than I expected but not nearly enough. We signaled, as we ran, to people in their cars, who looked at us like we were crazy, before realizing what was happening. Ten minutes later and the Lahar Drill was still blaring. More people were becoming aware this was not a drill. My family and I continued to run, and I wished there were more people with us like there ought to have been. But there was less than twenty minutes left to escape, and we lived in the center of downtown. The run took us half an hour every time we practiced it. Too many people believed it was just another drill, they didn't take the time to check. They had become too complacent.

Besides, who could have expected the mountain to erupt on the first Monday of the month?