Fire Drills, Severe Weather Drills, Lockdowns, Evacuation Drills for the 2017-2018 School Year

In a lot of cases they do! Can’t speak for all the schools where firefreak57 lives but in Massachusetts, policy seems to be that the firemen handle the entire thing. Once they are on site, our custodians show them to the panel and that’s it! Custodians and admins let eachother know over walkie-talkies and that’s how they know to start closing windows, checking fire doors, etc, but the fire department runs the “official” stopwatch, does a majority of the paperwork, and handles the alarms and the panel.
Apparently, once the firemen arrive at a school to perform a drill there’s no stopping it either unless there is a critical reason such as a timed standardized test going on or something. They also would hold off during the lunch periods (because of the regulations requiring everyone to have a minimum amount of time for lunch). But if your classroom has a view of the parking lot or street you can tell if a fire drill is imminent because one or two fire trucks will pull up a few minutes prior to alarm activation.
Businesses seem to be handled differently. For example, the company I work for in the city handles their own drills although occasionally the fire department stops by to practice sweeping through the building while we evacuate.

It’s also worth noting that I go to a private school, located in an office building.* You most likely go to a public school, which has different policies/procedures regarding fire drills.

*See my post in the ‘What alarm do you have at work/school’ topic for info on the fire alarm system (Notifier).

August 23, 2017 (1:21 PM)

Ugh… this is starting to get annoying.

This is the third time the fire alarm has gone off in two weeks. Once last Wednesday, then last Thursday, and now today. So anyways, it was 6th period, which is my lunch, and I was chilling with a couple kids in the commons. As I’m about to eat chips, the alarms go off once again. (Siemens ZHs in the west building). I didn’t record it because I wasn’t thinking about that, but we all got out relatively easily as the exit doors were right around the corner. Finally, we get out and have to wait almost 5 minutes before the Fire Department come, with two more minutes before the alarms shut up. Sadly after that, our lunch was over so I didn’t get to eat my chips (I ate them next period study hall as school allows you to eat during class :D).

This wasn’t a drill though, like last thursday. Apparently a bunch of dust might’ve went into the detectors. (last alarm wasn’t because of the water issue; it was because some of the food they were cooking up lit on fire, just clarifying)

I actually did go to a private elementary school and a private high school, although neither were located in an office building so that could play a factor. Codes vary from state to state and even from town to town as far as who is in charge of fire drills, but in MA it seems to consistently be the fire department that handles fire drills at schools. But at my university in MA, just like at my office, fire drills are carried out by maintenance personnel. But all of the K-12 schools I’ve been in/seen/know of in the state do not perform fire drills without the fire department present. So it depends on where you live and the zoning of the building among other things.

Was there a malfunction in the older building when there were older horns in there? As in older than U-MMTs?

I know in a lot of states, the fire department supervises at least one drill a year. My schools in New York and Ohio always had one FD drill. In Ohio, the teachers and middle/high school students knew about all drills ahead of time except the FD drill.

Colleges/universities in NY do NOT typically have the fire department at any drills (NY requires 1/semester in academic buildings, 2/semester residential), but campus police typically supervise drills and respond to alarms.

They were testing the fire alarms at the stadium where the Brockton Rox is located today (where I am one of their mascot performers, as I mentioned before.) Their Wheelock AS horn/strobes are REALLY loud.

Their Notifier AFP-100 system has been having numerous problems lately, so there is talk that they may be getting a new fire alarm system soon. Chances are, they will probably replace the AFP-100 with an NFS-320 or something (along with the annunciator) and keep the existing devices.

August 25, 2017 (7:14 AM)

At this point there’s obviously something seriously wrong with the siemens firefinder system in the west building. They went off before school even started, while we were still on the bus. As soon as I saw everyone leaving the school and strobe flashes from the windows I immediately know this was the fourth time it has gone off in two weeks. I’m sure these faulty weeks have already covered the drills we were supposed to have :stuck_out_tongue:

If the system gets replaced mid year I’m not suprised lol

Fire Drill: September 1, 2017 @ 9:20 AM EDT

Today’s fire drill was again captured on video for you all, but not without its imperfections unfortunately. As is evident from the video (which will be uploaded as soon as I do some minor editing and get a title screen for it) some teachers decided to play de-facto fire warden and yell at everybody. The one yelling at people to be quiet is okay, but one teacher (who embarrassingly happens to be my journalism teacher) decided to yell at me to put my phone away. This ticked me off because 1) I was in no way, shape, or form, showing anyone’s face on camera, nor was I impeding the evacuation process in any way! Plus it’s a public building, so technically the law states that I can record all I want, and since it’s a fire drill it can’t fall under disruption of school activities or some crap like that. Anyways a few ninth graders thought they could single me out too, calling me the ‘weird kid’ and laughing at me. This hurt my feelings a lot, especially since I have dealt with numerous incidents of verbal harassment/bullying for the better part of my school career, most prevalent in junior high, some so bad that when teachers/bus drivers decided to neglect the situation I had to immediately escalate it to involving the principal and administration, and the 2 girls got off easy from what I’d give them as a punishment if I were that principal, but anyways, I’ve since moved away and besides from ninth grade and today I’ve never dealt with this and I’m so embarrassed because what am I supposed to tell the teacher when I walk into their class first thing on Tuesday? I mean I wasn’t even in their class!

I’m not blaming it on the teacher, and I can most definitely understand why they called me out on it, but there’s a fine line between disciplining someone and then humiliating them and hurting their feelings in front of the hundred or so people in that hallway…that was what really made me mad more than anything.

We had a false fire alarm today at about 6:30 AM this moring in my college apartment/dorm building. System is a Firefinder XLS (as evidenced by the SSD annunicator in the lobby) with Siemens-branded Wheelock ET70 series speakers and speaker/strobes.

No video?? Eh, early morning wake up calls like that are no fun!

Nope, no video unfortunately. I was already up at the time - and to be honest, I found it pretty entertaining :lol:

6:30 is too early for me! But I can guarantee that the first thing I’m gonna grab is my phone and start recording when my dorm inevitably has it happen. To be clear, I won’t start recording until I’ve started working my way safely out the building!

Why exactly were you up at the asscrack of dawn?

Dang, I feel extremely sorry for you. Those two girls really shouldn’t’ve said those sort of things to you for having your phone out and recording during the drill. It’s the complete opposite at my school, where since EVERY person has their phone out at all times, nothing goes missed. When the fire system messes up, my snapchat stories are flooded with people recording with text reading “lol the drills going off again”. (and it’s only when i have my headphones at max volume so its extremely loud why does that happen). Does your school have a no phone policy or do people not have their phones out?

Well it wasn’t two girls, those were people that bullied me when I was in middle school living somewhere else. They were actually two boys. But yeah we have a no phone policy but it’s only strictly enforced during class and people still are on their social medias during then but if they get taken away more than once they go to the vice principal’s office.

I read that as girls, whoops.

No worries.

6:30 Too early!?! I’m in middle school, it starts at 8, you’ve gotta be there by 7:50 (really 7:45 if you don’t take the bus, because of the LONG parent drop off line to get line**), I get picked up at 7:35 by bus, they want me at the stop by 7:27, the stop is 3 mins away, plus I need an hour to take a shower, get dressed, eat breakfast… and high school starts even earlier at 7:30, many people try to get there by 7… and with traffic, that can be terrible. And school starts Tuesday, MAYBE for once my bus will come on time. And every once in awhile my bus driver will get there either 10-30 mins late, or 20 mins early, so I constantly need to keep an eye out… and if I sleep in too much I get the fun of missing the bus.

**the parent drop off line goes all the way up the road my school is on, onto the main road my school is off of sometimes, it is a line of cars trying to get into the circle in the parking lot that the students get out at then walk into the side door of the school, where busses drop kids aswell.

In a more on-topic matter, it looks to be ok weather the first few days of school, so hopefully we’ll get to do our drill then.

I’m in college now friend, I’ve served my time, and in my town if I wasn’t up by 5:30, and out the door by 6:15, I’d be late for school. Traffic was terrible.