37 flights of stairs....

[cindybubbles]

We're getting off topic here. I was hoping for your personal fire drill horror stories, not lectures about how fire safety procedures should be followed. I don't make the fire safety rules; I just follow them!

I should have been clearer when I vented. Now I am: what are your fire safety drill horror stories?

[ringo]

I should have been clearer when I vented. Now I am: what are your fire safety drill horror stories?

This is not a horror story, but this thread reminded me of the fire drills we had in high school (class of 99). When the alarm went off it sounded a lot like start trek, even had a voice come on and tell people to walk to the nearest exit. So the alarm wasn't that painful to the hears, but it did get its point across.

[Teskeria]

Bad planning by management - a fire drill is supposed to be a practice evacuation. Rather than practice evacuating someone with impaired mobility, they "pencil whipped" things by faking a "mobility-impaired person isn't in today" situation. How would things go in a real fire?

In a real fire, I would go to the LARGE window in the breakroom, at least 2 people would verify I am there (most days there would be 4-5 of the people who would verify in - there was a backup for each supervisor in case they were out.), and I would wait for the firemen to reach me. Because it would be quicker and safer than me trying to walk down the stairs taking those 20-30 minutes if it was a GOOD day. On a bad day it would take longer.

[Lyse]

Not a fire drill exactly - a tornado drill.

My senior year of high school we had moved from California back to the Carolinas. In home room one morning the drill alarm went off, and I immediately scooted under my desk. The teacher crouched down and explained that this was a tornado drill, not an earthquake drill, and that all students needed to evacuate the classroom because of the risk of broken windows.

I obediently followed her into the hallway, where all the kids where crowded and hunkered down along one side of the hall against the lockers. Why only the one side? The other side of the hall was a floor to ceiling plate glass wall that circled the central quad.

I went back in to the home room and contemplated my loss of faith in the "adult" world.

[TopEndDave]

Here are some fire alarm stories:

While working as a Chemistry Tech for the University Science Facility - 1980's
The alarms go off and they are very loud. All the technical staff and students leave the building as we are storing about hundreds of litres of flammable chemicals on each floor. Even though it is probably a false alarm we don't wish to become crispy critters if the building explodes if a big fireball. The fire wardens check the floors and chase out some of the academic staff who don't want to leave the building as they are busy. One even complained that they should turn down the volume of the alarms as he couldn't continue his telephone conversation.

While working as a Web Developer/Server Tech in government - 1990's
The building that I worked in had a dodgy owner who try anything to save a few dollars. The fire brigade charges a call out fee for false alarms. This stop time being wasted by building owners not fixing faulty alarms. Renovations were happening on the two lower floors and the dust kept setting off the alarms. We would leave the building and the owner would be in the fire stairs trying to stop us. Our instructions were to evacuate the building until the fire fighters had declared the all clear.
The suck came one day when everyone started to smell burning electronics/metal. The alarms didn't sound and we starting looking for the source. We then got a call from one of the bosses on the other floor to evacuate immediately as the fire alarms were not working. The boss had pushed the manual fire alarm button and nothing had happened. It turns out that the building owner had disabled the fire alarms without telling anyone. The burning smell was happening because there was a welder on the roof working on the air conditioning inlet.
What was worse about that building was when it had food shops on the ground floor. The alarms would sound, we leave the upper levels but the customers stay sitting eating their food. We would not be allowed back into the building at all but no one would chase out the customers.

In terms of flights of stairs the highest I have ever worked is the 8th floor. There is only one building that gets anywhere close to being over thirty floors and it is a residential building.

[fireheart]

Here are some fire alarm stories:

You've just reminded me of something TopEndDave...

Up in your area, apparently your local Green Apple State Office got bombed by a disgruntled customer

[Dave1982]

We're getting off topic here. I was hoping for your personal fire drill horror stories, not lectures about how fire safety procedures should be followed.

Nobody was lecturing and fire-safety information is not off-topic for a thread about fire drills.

[PepperElf]

Not 37 flights of stairs thankfully. The most I've had to do was 17 in one of my barracks rooms. Although going back UP when the elevator was broken sucked ass.

Our alarm sucked ass though cos you couldn't really hear it well. Inside the rooms it sounded like a car alarm.

Once we were all out though it was kinda fun. Someone turned on a radio in their truck and it turned into an impromptu mini party across the road from the building. Plus we had the mini-mart there so we could get drinks.


As for other "sucky" ones... eh. It's hard to say. A lot of the drills became old-hat really. We had a sunday on my first ship where the command was pissed at us and called THREE GQ drills in a row. They decided we were going to keep on doing them until we got "zebra set" within 5 minutes.

and we got to the point where no one really waited for the ship to sound "General quarters". All hands were expected to respond to major fuel oil leaks so whenever a drill went down, as soon as we heard "major fuel oil leak *blah bla bla bla bla* we were responding.

kinda weird on my other ships since my other ships didn't require all hands to respond. but the first ship was smaller so that was probably a factor

[TopEndDave]

You've just reminded me of something TopEndDave...

Up in your area, apparently your local Green Apple State Office got bombed by a disgruntled customer

It was the Territory Insurance Office store front in a shopping complex containing a green apple. The bomber pushed in a trolley full of fireworks and jerry cans of fuel. He then set the whole lot a light and ran out of the shop. Fifteen people suffered from smoke inhalation and burns but there were no deaths or critical injuries. Staff from the green apple along with police rushed to put out the fire and help people get out of the office. The whole complex was evacuated for most of the day.

The police caught the person responsible as he have made threats against TIO. He had even threatened to bomb the Darwin Office on that day. Unfortunately the Darwin Office threat was interrupted to be the TIO main office in another building and it had extra security. They didn't realise that he meant Darwin shop front. The guy who did it was charged with attempted murder and appeared in court in a spit hood for the bail hearing. Before the case came to trial he committed suicide in the prison. He had been arguing with TIO over an insurance claim.

[Merriweather]

Not a fire drill exactly - a tornado drill.

My senior year of high school we had moved from California back to the Carolinas. In home room one morning the drill alarm went off, and I immediately scooted under my desk. The teacher crouched down and explained that this was a tornado drill, not an earthquake drill, and that all students needed to evacuate the classroom because of the risk of broken windows.

I vaguely remember drills at school, where we would practise getting under our desks. I don't think they were ever clear about what the drills were for. As an adult, I looked back on them and thought maybe hurricane drills, but then, hurricanes don't come up suddenly. After a few years I finally recalled the general time frame, and put two and two together - Florida, about the time of the Cuban missile crisis. Musta been some strong desks,

[Chromatix]

Well, if the building is going to collapse around you, it's better to be underneath *something* which has a chance of blocking falling debris.

On a related note, over here all major building projects are required to include an air-raid shelter. There aren't currently any active drills about them, but I understand they are kept stocked with emergency supplies, and I know where the one for my building is. There are also signs in strategic places explaining this. One of the side effects of living so close to our friendly neighbour to the east...

[cindybubbles]

Nobody was lecturing and fire-safety information is not off-topic for a thread about fire drills.

Sorry, I just wanted to hear your personal experiences with fire drills, that's all. The reason why I asked for no "lectures" is that I didn't want it to devolve into a flame war.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Fire...heh heh...flame...uh huh huh

[TOLady]

I am a fire warden for our floor in our organization (also in your city cindybubbles!). Our building has the dumbest way of running fire drills.

Although it's a drill and we would like everyone to participate - they ANNOUNCE the damn things. Date and time!

Of course, everyone decides to do the coffee run about 10 minutes before the bells start ringing, so what's the freakin' point? Am I right?

I've been fire warden (one of two - plus assisters (sp?)) for about 10 years for our floor and I know the drill. Sweep the floor for stragglers, shutting each door behind us. Gather up people requiring assistance in one area and send off the roll-call takers to head to our meeting site (we have 500 employees so roll-call can take a while...).

We also have building management provide us with water and ice-cream (yeah!!!). In order for us to get everyone to the meeting site and have roll-call, we have instructed staff to bypass the ice-cream and drinks stations and head directly to the off-site gathering place. Numerous emails were sent by our heads of departments. The ice-cream etc will still be there when we get the all clear.

Come drill day - who saunters up ice-cream in hand to the off-site meeting place - none other than our head of HR. WHO SENT OUT THE EMAILS ABOUT NO ICE CREAM IN THE FIRST PLACE (sorry for shouting, but mannnn!).

_________

Not a fire drill day, but an actual - get the heck out of the building NOW!

Now - a I said - I am a fire warden and take that responsibility very seriously. I rounded up the PRAs and swept the floor with my assisters. Grab the walkie-talkie and let building management know that there were x number of people requiring assistance. Find out that it was a false alarm (reason I love being a fire warden - I find out before I walk down all those steps that it's a false alarm!). Go back to my office.

Then a thought occurred to me. Where was the other Fire Warden for my floor? Turns out that when the evacuation alarm came on - they panicked and headed down the stairs before anyone else. I'd thought it was taking me longer than usual to sweep the floor.

She's NOT a fire warden any longer. She's not even allowed to take the roll-call sheet. Never had to demote a fire warden before

____________

One extra one. We actually had a drill planned for earlier in June. Unfortunately, due to a recent incident in a building attached to our building (too many details would give away our building site), the drill was cancelled. Apparently the thought of having a few thousand people evacuating the building so close to the timing of this recent incident would be bad optics for building management.

Can't actually say I blame them. But yes - they cancelled the day of, but didn't send out an email until shortly before the scheduled time. Of course by that time, almost 3/4 of the building were already downstairs "getting coffee".

Scheduled drills never work!