Fire Alarms

Well today at the lab the fire alarm went off twice. The first time was a few minutes after I had gotten there in the morning and so it wasn't to inconvenient, although we did had to stay outside for a half hour in the muggy sun. The second alarm came later in the day and only lasted about 10 seconds. I don't believe there was a fire the first time, someone said that the dust can cause them to go off. However, I did use with butyl lithium in the lab today for my reaction, and if it comes in contact with the air it will immediately catch on fire. We had to use a needle to draw it out of its container while having the container under an atmosphere of argon gas. Since the argon gas is denser than air it keeps the air from entering the needle so that we could transfer it to the reaction vessel.