Fire drills in gym?

Someone recently mentioned here that their “worst nightmare” was the fire alarm going off in gym. Which reminded me… When I was a in elementary school, I was always more scared of it going off in gym class than anywhere else.

Has anyone else found alarms to be more frightening in the gym or any other large room?

And now, for a couple of stories:
My first elementary school had 2903-9101 + 9838 combos. The first day of kindergarten, one of the administrators said “gym”. The funny part was that I heard that as “Jim”, and got nervous, because Jim was the name of the guy who did the fire drills at Tunxis at the time. I was relieved when I found out what a gym was. But I did remember overhearing something about a fire alarm. Then, during whatever game we were playing, the two -9838’s sprung to life. The echo was amazing, but it wasn’t too loud. Then, we went into the emergency exit. That was horrible. It was a narrow, brick passageway with a single horn/strobe.

At my second elementary school, the gym had four 4903-9101 + 2902-9713’s, which played the rapid pulse tone with the “responsible personnel are responding” message. One day, a fire drill was announced to take place during or shortly after gym class. I knew what to expect from these things from a previous drill that occurred in the auditorium, and I was pretty nervous. The blips and deep voice sounded pretty alien for someone who was used to EM horns. The devices themselves were kind of scary-looking, too. Plus the large room. Of course, once it went off, it wasn’t that bad. We exited to the hallway, where the 4903+9838’s took over. From outside, you could hear the tone shift to whoop after the message finished its loop.

Come middle school, I didn’t care anymore, and one of my favorite drills was a surprise one that happened during gym, with the same speaker combos plus an unusually low-pitched 4050-80 + 9806 that drowned them both out.

Was it like the one on the left in this video:

The one on the left isn’t even a Federal Signal horn! O_O

No, it said 2901-9806 on it, and sounded like one. Just unusually low pitched, about a C#.

Fire drills in gym never bothered me and I can remember the times that being in the gym during a fire drill which are in the single digits. It never really bothered me that much. In elementary and high school, the alarms where 9838s on 4903 strobe plates. Both of the gyms had 4 alarms altogether that were directly in the room so I knew what was going to happen if they went off. Junior high school there were two gyms since when the school was built, boys and girls were segregated. Each gym had one 4051 on a 4050-80 light plate mounted up very high. One had a speaker wired to it to make the horn sound louder. It really wasn’t that bad when they went off. The only time I ever had a problem was when the girls were showering and the alarm went off. Kind of hard to throw long-pants and long-sleeved shirts on when you are SOPPING wet. Also it was getting cold out so that was fun.

That’s no fun at all.

And there was a speaker wired to a fire alarm to make it sound louder? How did that work?

Yes sir, I heard the same kind of thing, too, especially with me taking music class! The lowest-note '9806 I heard was near my ground floor classroom and right outside their candlepin bowling alley, LOL. It was D and sometimes dropped to C#. And that’s on the other side of the fire doors near the ground floor classroom (When taking a left from the usual classroom entrance) You take a right for the normal exit route, or else you have to go up some stairs!
(And one more right afterwards to go through the tech ed area and art class to use the fire exit in the art class.)

Next to the second right, appeared to formerly have a dead '9806! Since the late-1990s, probably 1998 or 1997, there was a System Sensor MA series horn at 800 hz continuous mode in a Simplex 2903-9101! Then once you go through tech ed, you will be near a Gentex SHG, right near the outside of the art class entrance. Then when going through art class, you will hear a squealer, at least sounds like one when not right in front of it! That’s a Federal Signal 450E!

If you look REAL closely, you can see what looks like wires running down into the horn. It probably was nothing, since I was only ever in the OTHER gym when the alarm went off which didn’t have one, but most likely it was nothing.

The height of that 4051 reminds me of the pre-reno Carter Hall, the Crotched Mountain Rehabilitation Center auditorium…

The fire drill I had during gym, in September of my second grade year, really was a nightmare. There were, I believe, four Federal 30A’s in there (coded to slow march time). It was deafening and sounded like the world was coming to an end. Quite a shock compared to the V7001T’s in the new wing that I was used to - that’s where my 1st and 2nd grade rooms where, as well as the art/music room, computer lab, and library. Luckily that was the only time I ever experienced this.

When they upgraded the old wing alarm system later that year, and put three Edwards 892-6B’s in the gym, it was still above-average loudness but not nightmare-level. It did make me jump one time when we were sitting quietly in our “squads” at the beginning of the period and the alarms went off (partially because you could also hear a V7001T from the new wing in the background), but it wasn’t so bad when we were playing sports. The “worst nightmare” at that point became the library, where they added two 892’s, making it quite loud and also particularly scary-sounding combined with the hallway V7001T’s. Still wasn’t quite as bad as the old alarms in the gym though.

At my first high school (I attended the same school from K-8), we used the gym in the elementary school next door. It had System Sensor MASS horn/strobes set to 800/1000 (hi/lo), and coded to California Code or something similar. It was actually kind of on the quiet side, but the tone combined with the coding and the echo of the gym made for a really eerie effect. I guess you could say I had the same reaction to those that the OP had to the voice evac in their gym - it sounded “alien” indeed. Though it might have been a little worse in the cafeteria - aside from the oddness of having a drill during lunch, the echo seemed worse, and the sound fading in and out amongst the crowd chatter was really spooky.

At my second high school, there were SIX 892-6B’s in the gym, but it really didn’t seem any louder than it would from inside a classroom with an open door. It was quite a large gym, so I guess the amount of horns was justified. The “worst nightmare” spot was the ROTC room (which was originally and subsequently a music room), a pretty small room with two horns in it. It was loud enough that one of my classmates actually remarked “Wow, that’s loud” or something along those lines.

I only remember having been through two instances during my grade school years when there were fire drills performed while I attended gym class. Both times, I wasn’t really that close to the lone horn/strobe in each gym of the schools I attended (there was always at least one separate strobe device installed also), but because of my sensitivity to loud noises back then, I did not handle such drills all that well. It didn’t help matters that both systems at those particular schools were set to continuous.

Whenever I was in gym, I could only hear the horns in the gym and no where else but there were a nice combination of horns mixing together when I was in school when I went from one area to the other area and it was really cool. Like for example for 4th and 5th grade, my exit route was down the stairs out through the entryway where the cafeteria entrance was so I would hear the 9219s and the 9838s blending into each other. This also applied in high school but in reverse since the 9219s were in one small hallway. Also the one time I was in art, the SHG horn was eerie and even more so when the 9219s were audible. Plus I always found it a bit cool how the AS went off 2 seconds before the 9219s started going off.

In high school, when we went out near the Aquaculture Building, I could hear the 9838s from the main building and the AS and 9219 from the Aquaculture Building had a really nice effect when heard from outside. And if you were in the Modular Building, the 892-2Bs reverberated along with the AS since that is all I could hear. The Classic SpectrAlert did the same thing the AS did in elementary school and if you even got CLOSE to the Cosmetology shop, all you could hear was 2DCDs.

Fire Alarm went off in my high school gym twice: once during the Fitness Festival (someone messed around with the microwave, so actual fire), and another during Homecoming because of smoke/fog machines. Thought it was one of the scoreboards at first during Fitness Festival, but it was the 9846s. More disappointed than startled.

I was always nervous about it. The one thing I was happy was that in elementary school, our gym had a 10" Adaptabel for class change, and for as long as I’ve been there, it’s never worked. However, I did hate it when we had the 10" fire bells, and the one time I was in the gym (rather the change room) when they decided to do a fire drill. I remember getting to see the panel though, the 6500 had pulsing lights going with the bells.

There was another time in high school, where I faced a similar problem again, since my high school still had their 6500 in with those loud 10" adaptabels. I remember one of the first fire drills we had in high school, it brought me back right to my childhood days. Anyways, I knew the one day we were going to have a fire drill in gym, so I pretended to be sick so I could have my headphones in while the alarms went off.