UA Movie Theater Evacuated

Last Sunday afternoon moviegoers in all eight theaters at the United Artist movie complex in La Cañada Flintridge were evacuated when an emergency alarm went off.

As bewildered moviegoers assembled outside the structure they were joined by theater personnel who looked as puzzled as they were. The wail of the alarm was still sounding as Deputy Brian Tibbett of the Crescenta Valley Sheriff’s Station arrived on site. He was told by theater manager Michael Giaimo that contact had been made with the theater’s alarm company, but there evidently had been no call subsequently made to the fire department by the alarm company. Tibbett then contacted his station on Briggs Avenue, which in turn called the L.A. County Fire Department.

County Fire Station 19, under the command of Capt. Richard Bodmer, responded to the call.

“We made a thorough search of each of the theaters and checked the fire alarm boxes, and there was no evidence of fire or tampering of the alarm boxes,” Bodmer said. “We can only conjecture that there was a faulty glitch in one of the smoke alarms that sometimes can happen.”

The facility’s manager that day, Giaimo, said, “In the three years I’ve worked here at the theater we have never had anything happen like this before.”

Customers were given a special pass to a movie of their choice to be used at a later date. For those wanting to go back to finish the movie they had been viewing prior to the alarm, there was a wait of nearly an hour before they could go back into the theater.

“I guess we’ll just have to read what happened in the Valley Sun,” said Meghan Breeden, a 2002 Crescenta Valley High graduate and current student at Cal State Long Beach who was in town visiting her mother. “Before I left for college my mom and I would go to the UA, and we made today our special day before I went back to college. The fire alarm kind of ruined our day out.”

“The theater management handled the situation very well,” said Ellen Foley, Meghan’s mother.