I know that there is a requirement on how many drills there needs to be, but is two a day really necessary? It’s already been 6 days, and 7 fire drills, one on Friday and two a day this week. If it were up to me, I’d put a limit on how many could be done in a certain time frame.
On a related note, during one of the drills, there was a TrueAlert horn/strobe with a broken horn, only the strobe went off. I reported it to maintenance.
maybe you guys really suck at the drills? :lol:
a lot of people would like to get rid of drills all together because of the time wasted doing them.
I call into question that factual accuracy of this post.
Education is the most important thing to school administrators and teachers. That many drills, especially in such a short time period, would never fly in a school, due partly to all of the lost instruction time. Heck, my principal apologizes over and over again for the disruption due to just one drill every few months. In addition, it would be a large burden on the local fire department to have to send and Engine Company out twice a day to oversee the fire drills.
There’s no value in having that many drills. Unless there is some evacuation time criteria that continues to fail to be met at your school or some other outstanding circumstance, its just excessive and ridiculous. Can’t see it happening.
They never do that when my school does fire drills. Might be that we evacuate the entire school in 1-2 minutes. We only have a occupancy of 600 students.
My student handbook says something like, “New York State requires a minimum of 16 fire drills, 12 of which must be conducted before December 1st.” But yeah, at this rate, my school will reach the quota by the end of next week!
My school district required fire drills once a month. I’d always get nervous towards the end of the month at school knowing that there would soon be a fire drill. They did seem to skip some months however.
Seems your stretching the facts, to exaggerate to try and make a good story. :?
Yeah it’s once a month for me too.
The State of Texas requires one fire drill per month, except for the first two weeks of school, where there are to be two drills. At my high school they did this by having every class go over the evacuation route the first week of school, then having an audible drill the second week (usually on Friday).
I agree that excessive fire drills infringe on instruction time, and so did my school. I remember looking at the annunciator in the front lobby and there was a chart above it with dates and times of our previous drills, as well as our elapsed evacuation time. We aim for four minutes or less, which is pretty reasonable for a school with a population of 2500. I remember we’ve taken as long as five minutes and as short as three and a half minutes, so we usually make it right on the money. They would usually happen during the first five minutes of class so as not to interrupt much. Most of the time, the teachers would just finish taking roll as the alarms sounded.
Of course, fire drills are important (Just think of that school fire in the late 1800s), but I think even once a month is excessive. In my opinion, there should be six per year, at the beginning of each grading period, or one every other month.
Well, my memory is not perfect, and I wrote that post when I didn’t have the manual with me. I knew 12 had something to do, my brain made the connection for before December 1st due to the frequency of the drills.
Once we had 85 fire drills in a three hour time frame, and there was real flames. :roll:
Well, in that case it was a fire drill. It was an actual fire emergency.
Try having a fire drill in a 20 story office building - now you have something. One local jurisdiction makes it a requirement for all public buildings to have at least one yearly fire drill. When we were doing our yearly test, the building engineer wanted the fire drill done at the same time (kill two birds). Security went room by room making sure everyone left the building. And if you didn’t you were escorted out. I’m talking lawyers, bankers, business people, etc. They were not happy. And a couple of them had some choice words for the fire chief downstairs from what I heard. The drill lasted a long time due to us checking everything and their insistance of them checking every room. Anyway, funny story, while I was going from the 2nd floor to the lobby floor via the stair tower I was unable to enter the lobby directly and had to go outside to come back in. As I was trying to re-enter the building at the front door security wouldn’t let me back in! They told me I had to go stand in the parking lot with the rest of the people. I politely said ok and walked away. At that time the chief engineer opened the door and yelled at me to get back in here - seeing as they were waiting for me to shut the system down so they can get the people back in! I told him “I wanted to see how long security wanted me to stand outside with this place blaring before they would let me back in the reset everything.” He just shook his head and said, “they’re idiots.”
Interesting… we have one large government building who insist we have no false evacuations and had us remove all pull stations. They said every time there’s a full evacuation, a lot of people go ahead and head home, and a few always end up “hurt” (rolled ankles or something walking down stairs or rushing to the parking lot, probably not legitimate, but hey, paid time off)… government workers. :roll:
drills are only required in k-12 here.
I have a funny feeling that’s sarcasm…
Well, in that case it wasn’t a fire drill. It was an actual fire emergency.
Again, I think he’s being sarcastic. Come on, 85 fire drills in the space of three hours? :roll:
My school board required 3 drills in the fall, 3 drills in the spring. I can’t recall if my elementary school did all their drills, but my high school certainly didn’t. Our average was usually 3-4 drills a year. I do remember during my first year we had 2 drills with a day in between them.
Apparently my college does fire drills, But I have never been caught in one. Nor will I ever this year, because the guy who helps out with the drills is one of my professors this year.
I believe the requirement in Colorado (where I’m from), is one drill per month for elementary, middle, and high school. At my college in Utah, most buildings are required to conduct one fire drill a year, with certain higher-occupancy buildings being required to do one one per term, and residence halls being required to do one within the first 10 days of a semester.
Yes, those are the requirements for Ontario schools.