My Experience
My Experience from a June 2, 2001 Visit:
FIRE ALARM The worst part of staying in unit 38 was the fire alarms. On the Saturday night of our arrival the alarm went off at 3:00 am. I called the operator who, “didn’t know what to tell me. He said he would call security. I waited 20 minutes. No response so I called security myself. No answer. I called the operator back who hadn’t been able to get up with security either. Security finally came 15 minutes later (35 minutes after my call). The security guard said, “I don’t know what to tell you. The maintenance man lives 22 miles away in Newport News. He doesn’t want to come in. He says maybe it’s the battery and says you should take out the battery.” My husband and I didn’t feel safe taking out the battery in case of a real fire. Then we would have no warning. The maintenance man had no way of knowing what was causing the alarm to go off. Also, Powhatan had no way of knowing when an alarm goes off in any of their units unless the guest calls them. A very unsafe practice, in my opinion, especially given the state of disrepair we found the Powhatan units to be in. Maintenance man, Jim Mavis, showed up at 5:30 am. We’d been waiting up for him since 3:00 am. He looked over the unit and found a problem with the heating/ air conditioning unit which “may have caused the alarm to sound.” The problem was fixed on Sunday. On Tuesday night at 4:00 am, the alarm went off again. I called the front desk. “I don’t know what to tell you.” was his response. He called his supervisor then called me back. “Maintenance will be here in an hour.” (They never did show up.) All this with the alarm blaring in the background. Because I knew that they had found a possible problem before which caused the alarm to go off, and given the 2 and a half hours it took maintenance to get there last time, I did not feel safe staying in the unit and waiting. I said, “I hope we don’t burn up by then. Something’s wrong. The alarms have got new batteries. They were replaced on Sunday. We’re getting out of here and I’m calling the fire department.” We woke up our crying scared kids and put them in the car. I called 911. The 911 operator said that a one hour wait for maintenance was “unacceptable”. She said she would call the front desk and if she couldn’t get any better results from them, she would send out the fire trucks. Fire trucks arrived about 4:40 am, so I guess she didn’t get results. Firemen investigated and could not see a reason for the alarm going off. “Could be dirt, dust, or bugs. Spiders are known to set off alarms.”, said the fireman. So much for a clean unit. We were told we could move ourselves to another unit “if we wanted.” Of course we wanted! My husband and I wanted Powhatan staff to help with the move so my husband walked to the front desk to ask. They said “no”, we’d have to move ourselves. They didn’t have the manpower. Only 2 people are on duty at night, a security guard and a desk clerk for over 400 units. No offer to help us later in the day when they had the manpower, we were on our own. So, after the fire trucks left at 5:00 am, we moved sleepy, crying kids. The security guard Tuesday night was very nice and helpful, but he had to get back to his post. I do not fault him or the front desk clerk. They really did have their hands full. It is not their fault that the place is under-staffed. My husband, teenage daughter and I started packing up and moving to the second unit, #71. I started seeing resort personnel in pick-up trucks and golf carts around 7:00 am. Sure would have been nice to use one of those! We finished around 7:30 am. Around 8:00 am, I went over to the Registration building to see if I could find the person in charge. I was introduced to Rodney Bowens. Mr. Bowens seemed very sympathetic and promised to get back to me before we left for Busch Gardens that day, by the end of the day at the latest. Mr. Bowens “prided himself on getting to the bottom of a problem and finding a solution.”. We didn’t hear from Mr. Bowens that day or the next. I called him on Friday but he was “out on the grounds”. We came home never having heard back from Mr. Bowens. I told him I wanted to be compensated for our loss (not only of sleep, but we were unable to enjoy the Busch Gardens tickets we had already purchased). He told me, “No” flat out. He said, “Maintenance issues happen. You have to learn to expect it.” I feel he was overly-concerned about the night personnels’ handling of the situation and got the impression that he was going to try to pass the fault on to them. I hope none of them get fired because of lack of training, clear policies, and understaffing on management’s part.
