Due to my schools North Gym and Auditorium being structully unstable, and the temporay structures built for the Band as a result of it. My school administration is “Planning” procedures for Evacuation and Lockdowns. As a main exit route from the U Building is blocked due to the band structures.
As result of this, my school conducted their Fire Drill After school, at 3:30 PM, (Students Leave at 2:00 PM.) I felt like no students were there at all.
I have a feeling this is aganst some code of some sort. But i will have to check my states Fire Code.
Each state is different. Each city in each state can be different. Some require them every month. Growing up we were only required to do 3 a year, and unscheduled activations of the alarm counted towards that.
So in short - no it should not be a federal law. Drills are important, but at the end of the day here’s all anyone needs to know: If the alarm goes off, don’t panic and get out of the building from the nearest exit. That’s it.
I have the Carehawk software as my school has the system, there is a setting in the Carehawk Settings software that you have to enable called “Page Priority” Tones will not suspend pages if this is checked. We have had bells interrupt pages because of this not being enabled, I will be pushing a new config to the system at some point in January with updated room names for Call-Ins as some were incorrect when we did a full test over the summer. I also will be fixing the page priority issue.
Here is the list of priority levels for the system, Over this coming summer or at some point this current school year. I want to see what would happen if we did an E-Page, right before a bell goes off, as we wouldn’t want bells to interrupt a lockdown.
An emergency page suspends all other audio
An emergency tone suspends all other audio except the above
A normal page suspends all other audio except the above
A tone suspends all other audio except the above
A program source audio event suspends nothing
Interrupted lower priority functions shall be restored after conclusion of the higher priority function.
It is a really nice system, and Carehawk has some new upgrades that I have brought to the admin’s attention, they like a lot of my ideas. I just need to reach back out again and see if they have made any progress.
Your district has the exact same set up. We had a Dukane system that was replaced with a CareHawk system when the mechanical bell system from Simplex died. We play the music as well. Only the music and bell override announcements.
Luckily we should be getting a new intercom system soon, hopefully they program the system properly… (ofcourse I won’t see that in action because I head to high school next year.)
Anyhow, I have a fire drill on Tuesday at 1:15, so we will see if any updates have been made, let’s hope it runs smoother than the last 2!
The way that we do our drills a lot of times is that we do it right at dismissal, because if we do it during the day, evidently people do not come back.
After many long weeks and days of postponement, my school finally conducted a “Real” Fire Drill. Admin have been saying one would occour since early this month but kept pushing it back utill 13th.
In 5th Period, the drill started when the SImplex 2901-9806 Horns started blaring in the hallways, I left the class first, as the Teacher told us prior. Once leaving the U Building by the Ampetheater Building, many of me and my classmates took a right turn to the corridor between the U building and North Gym, which was closed off due to structual issues. We then went inbeteen the North Gym and the Basketball Courts, which were being used for the School Band room since the Band room is part of the Closed North Gym.
After getting past the Botttleneck of Students, we then realized that we were not supposed to go alongside the north gym and U Building, but rather Inbetween the Lagnauage Building and North Gym instead. Thankfully, we found our teacher, (As each teacher has a large Sign with their name for the classes to line up with.) After we found him, we got in line and awaited for the All Clear.
Upon Reentry, I talked with my teacher, and he told me that the way they sort the class lines in a chart is off, which caused confusion. I also mentioned the phased Evauation process which is an Idea Ive been wanting to mention to Admin, to prevent Bottlenecks and issues like these. I also mentioned the Fire Alarm System replacement taking place in a few years, he says that the entire planning and FA System needs to be redone.
Shortly after, The bell rang, and had to rush to my 6th Period.
My school still hasn’t done the fire drill for December and there is only one week left to do it. My school also hasn’t done a severe weather drill yet this year.
lol, my teachers do this too. Since they are very obviously notified beforehand of fire drills but are likely told to keep them secret from students (so that the situation you are describing doesn’t happen), they act all weird. On one of the first few days of school I always have at least one teacher that just randomly says something like “you guys know the evacuation route, right?” One year, just before the May fire drill, my science teacher legit said “if I have to give you any unexpected instructions in the next few minutes please just listen to them” then sat back down so we could do independent work. About 20 minutes or so later the system activated. Another funny thing I remembered was literally a couple minutes before the September drill the following year. One of my classmates asked the teacher if she could use the bathroom, and my teacher came over and whispered (i could hear it bc i sat right behind her) “we’re having a fire drill in a minute, can you wait?”
Another thing I JUST remembered after posting this was actually this year. I’m obviously at a new school now with a different system (EST3 with Genesis speaker strobes set to the default code 3 fast beep), and my Chinese language teacher heard a fire truck go by outside. She instantly rushed to the window, checked her watch and said “hmm, not yet…” then went back to teaching. A few minutes later the system activated.
