Currently, both of the high schools in my area (including mine) have been using EST voice evac systems for quite some time. During this time, they have both had a custom message saying something along the lines of “Attention! Attention! The fire alarm has been activated. You need to leave immediately. Exit the school, and gather on the football field, by your class. Attendance will be taken immediately once all persons exit the school. If you are in the commons, please locate your access period teacher for attendance.”. This message works great to direct everyone towards the football field, where we all meet during a fire, however they have decided that the fire alarm could pose a danger to us, because we have been getting a lot of threats along the lines of “we are going to pull the fire alarm, and do something to students and staff.” (trying to keep it appropriate). Because of all of these threats, they have decided to work with the local AHJ (our fire department) and the local police department to create a new fire alarm response plan and message. They sent out an email at the beginning of this week, stating that the work will be done over thanksgiving break. I will not be sharing this email for confidentiality of my location, however they did include the script so that students know what to listen for. The new script is “Attention! Attention! The fire alarm has been activated. If you are currently located in a classroom, bring students inside, and lock the doors. If you are located in the commons, quickly proceed to the nearest classroom. and follow lockdown procedures. The alarm is being verified. Do not exit the building until it has been verified. Await further instructions, and follow lockdown procedures.”. While I do think that this could be good for some schools, I personally think that mine is overreacting, and our top priority should still be evacuation in the case of a fire alarm. This will definitely just end up scaring people, and not being as effective. I predict that it will be switched back as soon as the start of next year. They also want to put this in place, because of the amount of false alarms that happen in my school. We have at least two per month, because of people pulling it, or smoke detectors in the pool room activating. They believe that this will eliminate unnecessary evacuation, however I feel like they could have definitely done a better job at this message, because it is just going to confuse people.
2 Likes