McCallion
Quest

Fire Drills...Time Consuming, A Waste of Time??? Not Really.
If We Think About It, The Wait is Actually Worth It

By: Julia Hunter

Well the new school year at HMC has just begun, and like any year, routines are re-taught. One of these ‘routines’ we have to endure as a whole school are our standard fire drills. When I think of a fire drill, the first thing that pops into my mind is, funnily enough, is being in the washroom when the alarm sounds. Funny eh? But for others, it often brings back the vision of standing outside in the cold. Most often our fire drills are held in October, the beginning month of fall. Temperatures these days are unusually low, and with the rise of the up coming fire drills this season, standing outside in just a T-shirt can get quite chilly. The common complaint I hear from fellow students is , “we can't go to our locker to get our coats, so they expect us to wait outside for almost 15-20 minutes!!”

 Ever wondered what happens when the whole school is standing outside, hearing the fire bell ring over and over? Yes, it can feel like forever, standing in your class line, not even being able to talk or to do anything! Well, I have pondered why this happens for some time, and I'm ready to finally bring all the fire drill answers to the surface.

Alexa Love, who happens to be my fellow editor, is also a fire runner. These fire runners are the ones you see running around making sure all students are with their class. Since she has the inside information on fire drills, I sat down with her to find out why we have to wait so long outside.

The first thing I asked Alexa was how long it takes for her to run around the school and to "finish" her job of checking classes. She said, "Last year, the plan for HMC’s fire drills were to have 6 fire runners, 2 per group, and have them run around to the 3 areas of the school where classes exit out to (side field, back field, parking lot) and check the attendance. However, since the last fire drill, where a class went mysteriously missing, it has now changed. Now, there is one person per class who does the attendance, and then runs to the front of the school to let whoever is in charge know. My job, is now to check on any classes that have been missed by these individual runners. Unfortunately, this can add more time to the run, making it around 10-15 minutes."

            I then went on to ask if there has ever been any sort of delays with the new system. Alexa responded saying that, "with the new plan two classes forgot to send a runner, and we as fire runners, had to run back around the whole school to find where they were.”

            Based on what Alexa tells me it is clear that fire drills sometimes do get delayed and when something like that does happen, it usually leaves us outside for longer because of their mistake. Although it doesn't seem fair that the rest of us, who just want to get back indoors, have to suffer for the mistake of a couple of teachers, a fire drill does have to protect everyone in the school. Think about this: what happens if they didn’t bother going back to check that class they missed or to check on a missing student? Maybe that student was inside during the drill, and what if the school was actually on fire? What if that student was you? How would you feel if we just said something like, “Oh who cares if we don’t know where they are… he’s probably outside somewhere.” If that happened, then none of the runners would set out looking for you, and the chances of you getting out would probably be very slim. Fire drills are something that we can’t look at from a selfish point of view. They are designed for ‘everyone’s safety’ and not for convenience.

When it comes down to it, I’m pretty sure anyone would prefer to be outside, freezing, rather than being trapped in a classroom in a burning school. So, the next time you make that ‘groan’ when your teacher tells you the wait might be a little longer, take into consideration of the other students around you and their safety. I know there’s only one answer given in this article about fire drills, but when it comes down to it, that’s all there is to it. Alexa made a good point at the end of the interview saying, “I think we have to wait outside a long time, and I know it feels like forever, but it’s important to make sure that everyone is where they’re supposed to be, and to ensure that everyone at our school are safe.”

Now you know why fire drills seem to feel like eternity. However, it’s important to know that the last fire drill we had started at 9:32, and went to 9:47, which is exactly 15 minutes. I guess it seems longer when you’re pretty much doing nothing, right? But the good news is that 15 minutes is not an eternity…it’s just a small amount of time we spend in consideration of others.