Fire Drill Procedures

I have a question about fire drills at school. I remember at my old elementary school, all the first and fourth grade classes went out the same door. In 1st grade there didn’t seem to be any organization, and each teacher would just take their own classroom out. By the time I was in 4th grade, they tried to get all the classes into one line, same thing with the main door, a bunch of classes (2 second grade, 2 third grade, the library, and the computer lab all went out the main door.) What have other members of this fight noticed about fire drills, and how evacuations are organized?(Pre-k and K classes had their own doors to the outside, so this didn’t really apply to them.

Whenever I was in a fire drill it seemed pretty organized and in elementary and middle school for the most part we were able to stay with our classes or who we were with and didn’t get lost though there were some exceptions but nothing major. In high school, there wasn’t any line when you were in class but everybody did evacuate the way that the room they were in designated them to.

Something interesting about the fire drill routes in my elementary school was something to do with three classrooms down in the basement. The larger room which used to be the kitchen to the cafeteria when the cafeteria was down there had its own down but the room was used as a 1st grade classroom. The two other classrooms when in a fire drill would cut through that room and use that doorway. What makes it interesting is that the classrooms in question were SIXTH grade classrooms. So you had older students cutting through a room that had younger students in it. Of course, after the Station Nightclub Fire, the fire marshal forced the sixth grade classrooms to change the route since to get into that classroom, you had to open the doors which came out TOWARD you. Naturally this happened when I was in sixth grade and it annoyed me because I wanted to cut through that room. That was because the room had a Wheelock AS-2412 horn/strobe in it and it was the only code-3 horn/strobe in the school.

I have strong feelings about this issue so I’ll try to not keep it ranty.

Our school has a very strange logic of having an entire hallway (the entire hallway is about 75 meters long with approximately 300 students) walk from one side of the building to the other before going out the exit doors. I asked about why we didn’t use a stairwell which would have saved us about one to two minutes of walking with the logic being “if there were smoke in the stairs then it would be too dangerous”. The hallway could have used the main entrance doors which is closer than what we were going through.

Essentially, the school administration made the plan as if they were afraid for students using doors (with windows) to go into another compartment during a fire even though it was the quickest way out. I get why they’re concerned about keeping students in compartments in case of heavy smoke, but sacrificing the ability to get out of a building quickly is when they need to get back to the drawing board.

It’s a hard truth, but school administrations are way too focused on other things other than routine fire drills and evacuation plans. As a result, safety issues don’t get noticed until it “becomes a problem”, which are followed by a lack of punctual response (depending on who’s fixing the issue).

In elementary these were the rules:

Be quiet (or get yelled at by the 50 y/o teacher)
Don’t cover your ears (not a school rule but my teacher’s rule. the place had 2901-9833s
Don’t run (duh)
Don’t be stupid (E.G running around or hopping)
and most importantly…

DON’'T YOU DARE STARE AT THE BUILDING (reason was because “metal can fly out of the windows”)

Middle School:
Same stuff but no rule 2 or rule 5

High school:

Same as middle school

College:
Don’t do NSFW things during the drill (I was at a school meeting when I heard this. Crazy couple made out in restroom when signals turned on… yeah)
Don’t run
Just leave the place and don’t get caught in the flames

I think most college campus procedure for evacuating during a fire drill is not to get caught in the flames. :lol:

I think most college campus procedure for evacuating during a fire drill is not to get caught in the flames. :lol:

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Yep. or as the janitor said “Just don’t die.”

Here’s how drills have been for me:

Elementary School: (Private K-8 School)

1. Silent fire drills, no alarms
2. If you talk, you get detention
3. Single file line, stay with your class
4. The entire school leaves from one door
5. Stand on your class parking line
6. Wait for the principal to let everyone in.

Middle School (7-8 grade)

1. Fire alarm goes off, line up at the door
2. Join the blob of students going for the emergency stairwells
3. Regroup with your class on the track, teacher takes attendance
4. Entire student body has a party on the track for like 15 minutes because the principal doesn’t know how to use the FACP

High School

1. We don’t care what you do, just go outside.

I never really got why many schools just decide to have one hallway or worse one floor go out one door. When I think of that, it reminds me of the “Station Nightclub Fire” where an idiot bouncer turned people away from the door that the band went out of because it was for band members only and everybody got stuck in the main entrance door (fun fact: my mother’s friend has a daughter who is dating the daughter of said bouncer and his actions also resulted in his wife, her mother dying in the inferno).

Even in the modular building of my high school, all 9 classrooms would evacuate out the front instead of some going out the back because going out the back lead off the school property.

Fire drill procedures were pretty consistent throughout all the schools in my old school district.
Alarms go off, teachers grab their attendance sheets & emergency handbooks, line the class up (in ES mostly) and we head out towards the nearest exit. I remember especially in high school we’d use every available exit to dump the building, and sometimes they’d simulate blocked exits with cardboard boxes to simulate unavailable exits on account of the fire, so sometimes we’d have to turn around and use the next closest exit.
Average evacuation time was two and a half minutes for ES, three minutes for MS, and four or so for HS.

We never had blocked fire drills when I was in school that often. I remember one in 2nd grade which was 2000, none in middle school and one in high school when I was a junior in 2009. They might do them now, but they didn’t do them back then. Even when the Station Nightclub fire happened. The only thing that changed was the 6th grade evacuation route because it went out a door that swung outwards.

We never had blocked fire drills when I was in school that often. I remember one in 2nd grade which was 2000, none in middle school and one in high school when I was a junior in 2009. They might do them now, but they didn’t do them back then. Even when the Station Nightclub fire happened. The only thing that changed was the 6th grade evacuation route because it went out a door that swung outwards.

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The only time we had a ‘blocked’ fire drills was when the Bell tower on my old high school started crumbling apart, causing the main entrance to be inaccessible for most of the school year (my old high school used to be a seminary, hence the bell tower).