For over 100 years, schools have been practicing fire drills in an effort to keep their staff and students safe. In fact, some students may practice more than 72 fire drills throughout their grade school career. With the hope of ingraining what to do in the case of an emergency without students having to think twice, the repetition is working. But what if you line up in a single fire line and head straight into unknown danger? Then a well-rehearsed plan may be for nothing.
With the advancement of technology and the changes in threats to our schools, the fire drill is no longer the best way to practice emergency preparedness. No matter how many times a fire drill is practiced, it won’t be helpful if the situation doesn’t go exactly as expected. For instance, when a fire alarm is pulled, that doesn’t always mean a fire is taking place, but the school population has no way of knowing this. Due to the protocol, they will carry out what they have practiced during fire drills. For many scenarios, this is not ideal and can even be dangerous. If an intruder pulls a fire alarm, this can lead to students and staff flooding the hallways, which is the exact opposite of what a school would want to happen in this situation. More schools are seeing fire alarms being used as a means of communication for emergencies beyond a fire. In fact, we’ve seen active shooters use fire alarms to lure the masses to open gun fire in shootings like Parkland, among others.