I don’t know what the deal is… usually the alarm sounds for about 15 minutes before silenced. Then, we wait a few minutes for the all-clear then go back in. Usually, we are back in the room within 20 minutes. But, we have 2 schools to evacuate and the upper school has to go to the football field, then meet with their assigned teacher. I will say this much, our drills are getting shorter. The first one was right at 20 minutes. The second one was about 15-16 minutes. This one, we were back in the room by like 10:10 and we were evacuated just after 9:55 (I think like 9:58 or 9:59).
False alarms and fire drills here at college can last about 10-30 minutes, depending on the building. In a fire drill for my dorm, the fire department has to sweep all 7 floors to make sure all students are out. With false alarms it hinges more on waiting for the fire department to arrive and one time it took them about 5 minutes to shut the alarm off because it kept re-activating. From K-12 the drills lasted for around 10 minutes, which is pretty effecient.
Our school is having another fire drill tomorrow, which will bring our school to the last fire drill of the semester. It is during peroid 6 (I have math then), but I don’t know the time it’s happening. I’m guessing it will be at 1:00 or 1:30. We also have yet to do our lockdown drill this semester.
We had our last fire drill for this semester on Tuesday, it was during my math class. We also had a substitute teacher that day. The drill started at 1:00, and ended around 1:10. Here’s the video:
Don’t know whether it counts as a drill for us or not, but the alarm rang Monday morning right before school started. We evacuated and waited almost 15 minutes for the FD to show up. The administration let us back in before they turned off the alarms. It was cool to go in various buildings with it still ringing.
But, I guess that’s what happens when you turn on heaters for the first time. This happens every year around this time.
Let me add since I can’t edit anymore, the students were not at school on my side. The middle school side was in session.
I was heading to class when I noticed that the building I had class in was evacuating for a false alarm. We had to wait about 10 minutes for the fire department to arrive. When we got back inside, we were about to start class when the alarm reactivated (Siemens speaker/strobes; it was continuous this time but sometimes it’s code-3 and/or voice EVAC). It was quickly silenced with the strobes still flashing, so nobody knew whether to leave or not. Since our room is isolated in the basement, I went upstairs to see if anyone else was leaving. We ended up going to another building so we could have class.
We had our actual November fire drill not too long before dismissal today. We were back in the room within about 5 minutes. But, granted I was in a temporary room and it was the K-4 side that did the drill.
So–that answers my question. The alarm we had the other day before school didn’t count as the November drill.
This one happened last week. There were rumors of a bloody knife in the girl’s bathroom, and cops with drug dogs were on campus. Five minutes after hearing this rumor, our principal announced a lockdown. Our classroom was tiny, but we had a full-sized class. We all hid behind/under the teacher’s desk. This idiot kept slapping me in the face-great idea; especially if there could be an active shooter in the school.
It turned out to be a drill; the principal told one of my friends about it before it happened.
NOTE: It may have been a drug bust, considering the dogs. The school never tells us, though.
That happened to me my senior year. What was interesting was that for some reason the PA system wasn’t work, so the principal and the superintendent had to run classroom to classroom informing everyone that we were in lockdown mode. We stayed where we were for 1 and 1/2 periods (which equated to about an hour) and somewhere in that timeframe they fixed the PA and the all-clear was given over the PA. No one knew what was going on until we heard the dogs in the hallway and the cops whispering “Find the drugs! Search!” to the dogs and then we knew something was up. Origionally I was told they found nothing, but my uncle who was a custodian at the school said they found a bag of pot in a freshman’s locker. I was also told one of the dogs had an “accident” in the hallway. So that was a fun morning.
One thing to note, our proceedure is to shut the blinds leaving only about an inch of space at the bottom (I’m told this is so the cops can look into the rooms and see if everyone’s alright), shut off the lights, lock the door, and have everyone stand up along the wall the door’s on. Everyone did this for the most part, but as time went on, and the situation became far more obvious, we all took our seats and continued to work as quietly as possible, and I’m told most classes did that. The sad part is, this “practice” was done for drills in some classrooms with teachers actually continuing to teach during the drill. Most drills lasted 9 minutes, but onemy senior year lasted 12 minutes, which got everyone skeptical, but I was told about the drill at the beginning of the period, so I KNEW it was a drill.
In college, we had an emergency system implemented after the Virginia Tech massacre that sends you a text message, e-mail message, and phone message alerting you to a situation on campus. This was tested several times a year and worked fine for the most part and the only time it was actually used was for university-wide class cancellations. Our carillon was also refurbished so that it could double as an emergency PA system and broadcast alerts as needed, though it was only tested once and I wasn’t around for the test.
We had our Dec. today. I finally heard the Voice EVAC today!
I know it has been for some time that this post has not been updated, and I do apologize for bumping if the topic is this old, but Stevenson conducted its first lockdown drill today at 1:22PM during 6th hour. The drill lasted for 5 minutes. For lockdowns at my school, an announcement is made over the intercom regarding the drill and the procedures everyone inside has to take. This is one of two lockdown drills that are required by the state to be performed.
My school has this week and 2 days to do our lockdown for semester 1, because next week on wednesday we start our exams, so I’m expecting a lockdown for my school sometime this week.
We were supposed to do our fire drill earlier this week but got cancelled for rainy weather and it being way too wet to go to our area. In regards to lockdown–we haven’t done one yet this year. Usually lockdowns “Come and Go” around my area —they don’t do them for a while, then suddenly, they are all about doing them, then nothing again.
My sister just had a false alarm in -20 degree weather. :shock:
We finally had our semester 1 lockdown today, in period two at 10:00. Nothing really special, we had to go in the corner of the class, and stay quiet for about 10 minutes until they gave the all clear. Out of all the schools in my city, our school must be the only one that knows how to behave in a lockdown. I’ve heard of other schools that had real lockdowns, and people were calling and texting their parents, and misbehaving. In one school, they had a lockdown during lunch, and their cafeteria has glass windows so anyone could see in, and they were waving at the news cameras from the windows, which is a really stupid move. So anyways, now we have to do our two fire drills and our lockdown for semester two, which our semester begins next Thursday.
I got lucky today. There is a new building on my campus with SpectrAlert horn/strobes and speaker/strobes. The lecture hall I have a class in has around 8 horn/strobes in it. As I was leaving the class, the strobes started flashing. The speakers fast whooped followed by a announcement telling us to leave the building, don’t reenter, don’t use the elevator, etc. I remember thinking “I thought the alarms would be louder”. Since the alarm was sounding I decided to take the close exit rather than the one that would take me to the center of campus. That was a good decision to make because about a minute, the horns (in unsynched code-3, or maybe it was the U-MMTs in the connected building) sounded (I guess the system has stages or something). They were so loud, they could be heard from all over campus.
Last Friday, we had a fire drill at 1:45. Luckily, it was really nice weather compared to the sub-zero temperatures that we’re experiencing today! For this drill, they didn’t bother to silence the alarms and then reset them like they normally do.
We had one at the beginning of 3rd period today. I just got seated when the horns started sounding in march time. It wasn’t very startling, as it was too quiet for most people to notice (Probably a combo of the carpeting and unusually quiet horns).
Alarms heard, from first to last:
34T + 4050-80
4051 + 4050-80’s in the background
Wheelock ASWP (outside)
Wheelock MT-24-WM (outside)
The 4050s’ lights were unusually red. I expected more of an orange color (I also expected a lot more burnt out lights).
Today at 8:36AM and 9:07AM, during 2nd hour, two false fire alarms occurred at Stevenson. I learned from a student’s teacher that the possible cause was a short-circuited ventilation fan. The weather outside was very cold; there was a mound of snow where we would normally walk on in case of emergency so we had to use a nearby sidewalk. As a reminder, the signals where I was are National Time branded Faraday horn/strobes; signal coding is continuous.