Again, I can't help but point out how absolutely CRAP our fire bell is. It's the sound of a hammer hitting plastic. And if you search around in the past posts, I vaguely recall comparing the sound of the firebell to someone passing wind. Something like that.
Anyway, it's absolutely positively almost SAD how the reform managed to even infiltrate into the eval of our evac.
It's mind-boggling, check this shit out, I'll try to quote as precisely as possible:
"The evac drill was UNKNOWN to all staff. We'd like to mention the students in classes on the ground floor facing Trudeau street should exit via the front exit and walk around to the assembly area: the school yard. It was a little SLOW, but we'd like to congratulate the two temporarily physically disabled persons who followed proper evac procedure and waited to descend the stairs last. Also, generally, the evac was quick and orderly considering the state of congestion in the hallways."
Wow, it was SLOW but relatively FAST considering the state of congestion. So reform. If it were real, we'd be toast anyway, now wouldn't we? But still, reform means we have to find some good in the bad so the children's self esteem won't be harmed. I'm not against it glossing the hard truth over if we were a primary school, but we're all sec 3-4-5 there. Be honest and do yourself and all of us a favor. The eval should have been something like this:
"Listen up, dead people, the evac was horrific. In fact, you'd all be DEAD. You idiots in the ground floor classes facing Trudeau who went the wrong way, you're responsible for killing a hundred or so of your classmates. Next time, take the correct exit, that being the FRONT exit and take a hike around the school to reach the school yard. And congratulations to the two temporarily physically disabled persons for following proper procedure, but try to NOT be temporarily disabled when a real fire breaks out, your chances of surviving without looking like BBQ will be greatly increased. All in all, it was TOO slow. I wouldn't bet my life on all the asbestos retarding the fire sufficiently to let you all make it out in 2 minutes. It's 90 seconds or you can roast in Hell. Happy fire prevention week!"
{Surrogate editor says article should've ended here. I agree, so feel free to stop reading at this point}
But honestly, it doesn't really matter. Drills are more about ass covering than anything else so when there actually is a fire and somehow everybody got carbonized, they can say "look, we did our job, we drilled them!"
In my experience SHIT HAPPENS, and NOTHING goes according to plan. In dangerous situations, everything goes to hell and faster than you can say "oh shit".
Sure drills help, but how much you want to bet the real fire is going to occur in a stairwell, or similar chokepoint? Murphy's Law is a real bitch.
Then, all we have to get us through it is wits, luck and prayer. This isn't reassuring consider the panicky nature of sec 3s as witnessed during the 211s rock incident.
Perhaps the evac will be relatively calm until they spot the fiery orange glow at which point you can bet hallways will turn into meat grinders. It's ironic how in the majority of evacuations, more people are trampled by panicky idiots than hurt by whatever reason they're evacuating in the first place.
As a side note, nobody told anybody that in presence of smoke, we should crawl... at this point, I'm hoping it's because they FORGOT rather than that they assumed that everybody in the school is that intuitive.
How the fuck was the drill reform?
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