Tropical Cyclone Gene

I had debated which two week team to go to Fiji with. It looks like I chose right, since this week's cyclone sounds significantly worse than the one we experienced, which didn't hit Viti Levu directly.

I hope everybody in Vusama (and at USP) is okay.

Chirp! Chirp!

That annoying chirping is, of course, the sound a smoke alarm makes when the batteries are low.

The problem is that the chirping didn't start until after the power went out this evening. It's kind of hard to climb up on a stepstool n the dark to change batteries. When the power came back on, I took the smoke alarm down, opened the battery compartment (not trivial to figure out how to) and discovered it uses a 9-volt battery.

Which I don't have on hand and I have been home sick for the past day and a half and I really don't feel like going out to the store to buy a bloody battery right now.

Shouldn't the low battery chirp start as soon as the battery is low so one has a reasonable chance?