Fire Drill

[Before I write tonight, I want to aplogize for my neglect. I have not been to visit my friends' blogs in a few days, and I miss reading about each of you. I makes me sad to miss out on the happenings in your lives, and I will be reading madly to catch up in a couple of days.]

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At the school where I work, it is Emergency Preparedness Week, which means that during the day the little kids march outside for fire drills; shelter under their desks from imaginary earthquakes; and practice lock-downs, in which everyone pretends that the doors to our classrooms actually lock.

People are, I have discovered, much less concerned about the evening adult education program. I suppose this is partly because they are grown-ups and party because my boss, who is in charge of fire drills, doesn't work nights. In the 15 years I have worked at my school, we have never had a fire drill during evening classes, so we decided to give it a try. This was a drill for a drill, really. To do a proper drill, the fire alarm has to go off, and it has to be a surprise. Setting off the fire alarm requires a joint effort on the part of my boss, the alarm company and the fire department. Sometime soon? My students tell me they would prefer to wait until summer, when it's warm.

At any rate, the staff and I assigned ourselves evacuation tasks and decided to have the drill at 7:50 PM. I spent time before the drill going from classroom to classroom, explaining fire drills and evacuation plans to our students. This is an English as a Second Language program, thus requiring broad gestures to indicate the proper stairwell, the nearest exit and the "meeting place". By the fourth explanation or so, I felt like a flight attendant, or like I was doing the "Macarena". Everyone agreed to pretend to be surprised and put their coats on.

It went pretty well, but we did learn some things from the experience.

1. Regarding the sounding of the alarm, there is no substitute for the real thing. Kate parading through the hallways with a pot and lid from the school kitchen is a poor (though amusing) substitute.

2. If you have a fire drill at night, it will be dark. I had told all the groups to congregate on the street in front of the school, find their supervising teachers and check in so everyone could be accounted for. Instead, we all milled around trying to find each other until we gave up and went back inside for coffee. I need to get a little flashlight for each teacher, so she can be easily spotted. As it was, we were reduced to bleating like sheep searching for our lambs. And you know how it is. You call out, "JOSE!", and eight male voices from all directions shout, "HERE!"

By the way, when is the drill over? When can I stop the stopwatch? When everyone is A) out of the building? B) clear of the fire zone and at the "meeting place"? C) accounted for by the supervising teacher? If it's "C", the drill isn't over, yet.

3. Walkie-talkies are cool, but it helps to know how to use one. As arranged, our Floor Manager, Mark, had grabbed one and I had grabbed the other at the beginning of the drill. As we exited the building, I could hear him: "Kate, the building's clear. Do you read?" In the dark, milling with the crowd, I was randomly squeezing bits of walkie-talkie, going, "Hello? Hello?" Afterward, back in the building, he showed me the button to press. Oh, OK. I went to the end of the hall so we could try it again, and unthinkingly held it up to my ear, causing my head to explode when he talked. "It's not a phone, Kate!" Right.

I don't know if our students feel any safer, but they were highly entertained.