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If You Hear These Words on Public Transport, be on Alert
Why you don’t want to hear this sentence in a train station
Have you ever been waiting for a train and heard this announcement:
“Would Inspector Sands please report to the operations room?”
Congratulations! If you’re reading this, you may just have survived a potentially deadly incident.
Who is Inspector Sands?
There is no Inspector Sands — it’s a code phrase for “the building is on fire”. Fun fact huh? And also kind of scary.
Often, it’s an automated message triggered by the building’s smoke alarms being activated, but sometimes it’s live, especially when there is more specific information, like “Can Inspector Sands come to platform 2” rather than the generic “operations room”.
Where does the phrase come from?
It has its history in the theatre. If a fire were to break out backstage, buckets of sand were used to put it out. Quite why theatres were so prone to bursting into flame has yet to be explained, but when help was needed, people would call for “Mr Sands” to avoid panicking the audience or performers.
