School Fire Drills Must Be Planned For All Probabilities to Save Lives
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Inadequate fire drills may be responsible for many of the deaths and injuries in school fires!
Drills are held and everyone believes proper measures are being taken, but the drills may be so poorly planned that they do not help save lives.
This article is an appeal to trained emergency workers to offer their services and expertise to schools to review safety procedures. In addition to your knowhow on evacuation, first aid, etc., you can help locate, supply or create the new kinds of equipment and supplies schools should have.
There are a number of things that need changing, and if you just try to remember how fire drills were held when you were in school and how you felt about them, you will have a good idea of where to start. So, observe some drills and make some recommendations. If there is a Red Cross group or a Future Nurses group in the high school, ask them to help.
Reaction training needed
If a serious fire starts in a school, students may have only a few minutes to escape unhurt. Those few minutes will need to be the clearest thinking moments of their lives. Unfortunately, most school fire drills do not train children to react in the ways most likely to save lives.
To be effective, drills should be unexpected. Teachers usually know the drill is coming and are, therefore, never genuinely startled. Even very young children soon discover that drills almost always come on nice days, just before or after recess or lunch so that no serious disruption occurs in the saga of Dick and Jane. They certainly are aware that the teachers aren’t really alarmed.
The drills always go smoothly. All doors are open and halls clear. Everyone marches out obediently, but with the clear understanding that it’s all a put-up job. These drills are well intentioned, they make everyone feel more secure, and they seem to satisfy the fire marshal and the insurance carrier. But they do not prepare students to save themselves in a real fire.
Drill in bad weather
How can emergency drills be more helpful? By reconstructing the elements that would be present in a genuine emergency and teaching both children and teachers how to deal with them realistically.
Fires don’t always happen on good weather days—and neither should drills. Of course we are concerned about children’s health, but not at the cost of their lives. If drills are as efficient as they should be, everyone will be out and back very quickly, and it’s not necessary to choose a 20-below-zero day or a raging blizzard to meet the criteria of reality.
What do we do if it is very bad weather and we have a real fire? If we never drill on those days, we will never discover the problems or plan a solution to them. For short periods or in only moderately cold weather, teachers can lead simple calisthenics to keep youngsters warm. Perhaps schools need to consider asking architects to throw aesthetics to the wind and place pegs for hanging coats in the open so that children can grab their coats as they leave the building.
During a fire, children cannot be left standing outside to freeze, to he sprayed by hoses, or be run over by fire apparatus. What would you do in a real fire? Plan that and then do it at every drill.
Leave area for apparatus
Where will the fire apparatus be positioned? You may be surprised to discover that some of the room lines are assigned to just such dangerous areas.
Look over the terrain. Would children need to get farther from the building than is adequate for the average drill to avoid water, heat or falling debris? Plan a second signal—four short bells or a similar code—which means get 200 feet, or whatever is an appropriate distance in your situation, away from the building before you stop again.
Would children have to go to other buildings or nearby homes for shelter? Has anyone recruited the spaces and trained the people? Is there an external bell signal that would alert volunteer neighborhood mothers to turn off stoves, secure dangerous pets, put babies in protected places and get ready for the children sent to their homes?
Is there a bullhorn or other communications system for giving directions to the children standing outside? Where is it stored? Is anyone responsible for carrying this equipment on all drills?
In a real emergency, you would expect at least some minor mishaps, scrapes, cuts, burns, etc. Be sure the nurse has an emergency kit, a fast way to move it, and an established location outside so teachers and children know where to find her. Be sure she takes her equipment on all drills.
Will parents panic and race to the scene? Is anyone assigned to control traffic, to let media know if everyone is safe and urge parents not to come?
A real fire could start while everyone is in the gym or the lunchroom, so some drills should occur then too. Teachers wouldn’t know about a fire in advance and need practice in reacting without notice and without panic. At least a few drills should be called by an outside administrator so that even the principal has a chance to try out emergency reactions.
Even cooks must leave
Make it clear that everyone must leave the building. Especially in secondary schools, many teachers regularly stay in the warm building or huddle just inside or outside the door—urging the kids to go on out. Be sure custodians, secretaries and cooks participate in drills.
In a fire, there would be smoke, blocked exits, etc. Everyone needs to know alternate ways out. Once in a while at least, a harmless smoke device should be used—or a barricade blocking an exit. An even simpler way to simulate obstacles is suitable for younger children. You must simply announce on the public address system—immediately after the fire signal—that the east hallway is blocked at room 7 or some similar logistic problem. This will make the children and teachers think quickly and clearly, and it will point up what procedures need to be changed and which ones require greater practice.
It’s tempting to leave sick children in the nurse’s office because we do not wish to expose them to the elements. In a fire, they would have to leave, so prepare for it by having enough blankets to wrap them in and take them out.
Pool and shower procedure
A fire may start when high school students are in the pool or the showers. Is there a procedure for getting them out without waiting to dress? Maybe blankets are the answer, but be sure there are enough and that they are quickly available.
In a large school, be sure students know all the teachers and staff on sight or issue emergency identification badges so that everyone knows whose directions are to be followed. Whenever a substitute is assigned, the teacher next door should be responsible for being sure the substitute knows how to proceed.
Children should be trained to leave quickly and quietly and to remain quiet outdoors so that directions and messages can be heard. Then, when the all-clear sounds, sing, dance or yell your way back in! If the drill has been taken seriously, the tension level needs to be lowered. This also demonstrates that rules of silence are not made just for the nasty fun of ordering kids around—that they are imposed only when really needed for a sensible reason.
Children who are likely to panic, have seizures, or serious respiratory problems if exposed to smoke should be identified in advance so that the adult in charge will know. A desk chair with casters can be used to move a child who faints, or the awkward cherub wearing a leg cast. The nurse should include in her drill emergency kit any “standby” medications that have been left with her.
Teach buddy system
In smoky fires, the buddy system and human chains save lives, but they won’t happen unless they are practiced. All teachers should be sure they know at least three alternate exits from their classroom, and they should practice getting out blindfolded. It’s a valuable exercise for smoke conditions and it tends to underline the genuine dangers.
The basic principle is that lives are saved if everyone knows exactly what to do, does it quickly and adjusts to the unexpected with clear thinking and without panic.
Every fire signal, like every suicide attempt, must be assumed to be real. Repeated sloppy, put-on drills, on the other hand, teach students that they are not serious business. This makes a child less able to handle genuine emergencies—perhaps even less able than if there had been no drills at all.
The fire department should help plan school exit drills. An engine company might respond to a drill and even stretch some hose as a demonstration of serious and efficient emergency behavior for the children to observe.
Church fire safety
Many of these same procedures should be in effect in churches and Sunday schools. First, of course, you need a signal system, such as a loud buzzer. Be sure it can be heard everywhere in the building and that all adults and at least all teenagers know how to activate the alarm.
If the phone is locked in the pastor’s office, it is useless to you. There is no time to look for keys after a fire starts. There is also no time to look up numbers, so be sure the fire and other emergency numbers are written right on the phone in large clear letters. Find some way to make the phone available through a pass-through window, or by placing it in an unlocked area.
If the available telephone is a pay phone, keep a dime taped to the phone. There won’t be time to look for change. Of course if the 911 emergency number is available in your community, you can call without the dime.
Underline the fact that unless they are well trained and the fire is very small, amateurs should not try to put it out themselves. If there is a trained person, be sure he has the proper types of fire extinguishers in good condition.
Church groups should be encouraged to hold drills regularly, at least once in two months, and have them called without warning so that everyone must react as he would in a genuine emergency.
These same ideas apply not only to fires but also to bomb threats, gas or fume dangers, floods, or any other emergency which requires clearing the building quickly.
PTA may help
It is not a big job to check procedures and plan safe practices. Perhaps the PTA will volunteer to contact nearby parents and recruit them to open their homes, help supervise children, direct traffic, etc., in case of a fire. Parents might also locate all the phones in the immediate neighborhood which householders are willing to let you use. Every teacher needs to have a name, address and telephone list of everyone in her class which she carries with her on all emergency drills so that the missing can be identified and parents contacted. Administrators should carry a similar staff list and a list of emergency telephone numbers.
Let children help plan
Encourage teachers to let the children in on the planning! They will have lots of good ideas—like always taking your lunch box with you on morning drills “just in case.” Their participation in the planning will help them understand how vital it is to take all fire drills seriously. Also, you will no doubt find that they will also enjoy making safety plans for the family at home.
You may have to beg and borrow the necessary equipment, but you will have a great time working with the youngsters. And you may be glad to have one of your teacher trainees show up to help you at a community disaster. Most of all, you will know that the children in the community are just a bit safer because you were willing to help all the children—including your own.
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