Sam_2.0
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Post by Sam_2.0 on Nov 15, 2013 15:57:30 GMT -5
We just had one of these at our building the other day. For me, it's 30 floors down = 60 sets of stairs, plus some convoluted hallways thrown in. Good luck if we really do have a fire. It takes about 15-20 minutes to go all the way down since everyone moves at the pace of the slowest person. Participation is mandatory. They evacuate all 1000+ people and the fire dept has to clear each floor before we can go back in. Really just a lovely way to spend the morning. At least our check-in spot is a coffee shop down the street For those in bigger cities that work in buildings with 50+ floors, do you all have to do fire drills? Are they mandatory? Or do they just give you some instructions and say good luck incase there's ever a fire?
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Nov 15, 2013 15:58:26 GMT -5
Good to hear. Be safe. Maybe one day they will build a giant slide that goes down the stairway.
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Sam_2.0
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Post by Sam_2.0 on Nov 15, 2013 16:00:50 GMT -5
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mollyanna58
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Post by mollyanna58 on Nov 15, 2013 16:27:55 GMT -5
Many, many people walked downstairs at the WTC, so I'm thinking the drills are worthwhile. Also good exercise
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8 Bit WWBG
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Post by 8 Bit WWBG on Nov 15, 2013 16:34:17 GMT -5
I like how sometimes, the news of the fire drill will be circulated ahead of time "slip out", and people start leaving 10 minutes ahead of time. We had a record evacuation time that day.
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Chocolate Lover
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Post by Chocolate Lover on Nov 15, 2013 16:35:45 GMT -5
If I'm walking down 30 flights of stairs chances are good I won't be doing much else the rest of the day! And there better be a calendar worthy fireman at the bottom! Around here the fire alarm gets set off accidentally so much that no one even flinches anymore, much less gets up out of their chairs. We are a one story building though.
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Cookies Galore
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Post by Cookies Galore on Nov 15, 2013 17:02:27 GMT -5
We only have five floors in the main wing (we have a 10 floor addition) but I still remember the day the fire alarm went off and one of the admins screamed "HOLY SHIT!!!!!" really loud.
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Bob Ross
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Post by Bob Ross on Nov 15, 2013 17:04:18 GMT -5
It takes about 15-20 minutes to go all the way down This is only true because you're not panicking and shoving enough. Get with the program. O.T.S.S.
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Tiny
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Post by Tiny on Nov 15, 2013 17:09:38 GMT -5
They made you walk down 30 floors!!! OMG!! I've worked in lots of tall buildings for the last 20+ years and we've never once had a complete evacuation of the building. There's never been a 'surprise' firedrill. The worst was when we were just given a range of days when it would happen. I'm working in a 40+ story, less than 10 year old building - and we get notification of the day and a 2 hour time window when the drill will occur. How it works: The alarm goes off, (an audiable sound of annoyance from 40 some workers rises from the cubefarm), an announcement comes over the PA system telling us what to do "this is the Fire Department, a drill is in progress, please move down X floors thru your nearest exit". Sometimes they try to trick us! and put a Faux Fire (a large picture of a fire) near a stairwell or in a hallway so we have to find an alternative route to the stairwell(s). We all pretty much willingly (if slowly) leave the office. We generally go down only a floor or two - but the last drill they evacuated 4 floors at the same time and we had to go down alot more floors (we went down 3 floors - the floors above us went down more). We get 'admonished' if we bring drinks and food with us OR if we talk too much in the stairwell. Which makes sense - a spilled drink or too much noise makes for unsafe conditions. A couple of years ago we had a real 'emergency' my co-workers and I had our faces plastered to the floor to cieling windows watching a spectacular storm race towards the city. The wind hit the windows with a WHOOMMMP!! and we were like YIKES! and then the alarms went off and we were told to move to interior areas (no windows) -- which we all did with out ANY coaxing. IT was all over in less than 5 minutes and we were told to return to our desks. No damage done to my building but some bits and peices of other buildings went airborne and fell.
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Tiny
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Post by Tiny on Nov 15, 2013 17:23:33 GMT -5
FWIW: the fire drills are mandatory and thanks to a tradgic high rise fire about 5 years ago (I think 6 people died in a stairwell from smoke because they made some bad decisions AND the building had faulty safety doors) we all take the drills pretty seriously. That fire changed the way alot of buildings do fire drills and what information is given over and over and over about the idiosycracies of the building you are working in (so you can make the best decisions when evacuating). There have been other highrise fire related deaths but I'm probably the only one who remembers them (it's kinda interesting stuff - that changed things like buildings being known publicly by address rather than name. and also how often fire drills occur etc...) A couple of years ago --there was a terrible fire in one of the older (1930's era) buildings on a floor well above street level - 2 floors completely burned - everyone got out ok - no civilians or firemen hurt. I'm a strong believer in fire safety.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Nov 15, 2013 22:13:42 GMT -5
I don't know whether they had fire drills or not, but my sister's BF's older brother walked down 65 flights of stairs in one of the Twin Towers on 9/11, and lived to tell the tale.
Very interesting thread. At my old job, we were on the sixth (top) floor. Most of us couldn't be bothered to walk down six flights of stairs, and then back up again. So we stayed. Since we were in the "attic", nobody ever bothered to check on us or tell us we needed to leave.
At my new job (university) we have at least 2 or 3 fire drills per year. They can be a HUGE PITA if you are giving an exam or doing marked presentations, but whatever. We all leave INSTANTLY. They are also lot of fun because we get to chat to our students informally. I mentioned to a friend / colleague that at my old job, nobody ever left our sixth-floor office. She said, aghast, but how could you know whether it was a drill or a real fire?!
Good point!!! We always (rightly, as it happened) assumed it was just a drill. Sometimes one of us did overhear "secret mutterings" from reception on our way in. But if we had had a real fire, with that attitude, we certainly all would have died up there on the sixth floor. I had never thought about it before, but when my friend / colleague pointed it out, I realized it was scary, and we all had a really bad attitude.
Now, as a teacher, obviously there is NO way I would EVER do that. The INSTANT we hear the alarm, it's "grab your bag and let's go, NOW." Sometimes they tell me (rightly), it could be a false alarm. I say if it is, we'll just turn back. I tell them, in a worst-case scenario, it's 5 minutes less of having to listen to me LOL.
In retrospect, my whole department at my old job acted VERY badly. I'm sure it didn't help that our boss was always "too busy" to evacuate.
That would probably be a fireable offense in the US, being "too busy" to evaculate during a fire alarm, and setting the example for your reports to do the same.
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tcu2003
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Post by tcu2003 on Nov 15, 2013 22:38:54 GMT -5
We just had one last week. The fire department was there and they checked to make sure the whole building was clear. I'm on the 2nd floor, and the building is only 12 stories, so no on has it that bad. The building management company did have cookies for us on our way back in, though.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Nov 15, 2013 22:49:46 GMT -5
The building management company did have cookies for us on our way back in, though.
That's AWESOME!!! I wish my school did something like that lol!
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Phoenix84
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Post by Phoenix84 on Nov 16, 2013 0:25:25 GMT -5
I remember the fire drills in college, or rather real fire alarms. It sucked when someone would leave a pizza in the oven too long and we'd have to get up and out of the building at 3:00 a.m. in the middle of January....
Ah, the joys of dorm living....
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Sam_2.0
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Post by Sam_2.0 on Nov 16, 2013 8:52:35 GMT -5
I remember the fire drills in college, or rather real fire alarms. It sucked when someone would leave a pizza in the oven too long and we'd have to get up and out of the building at 3:00 a.m. in the middle of January....
Ah, the joys of dorm living.... Had one of those happen in college. I was the RA and we were in one girl's room watching Backdraft. Right at the most dramatic point of the movie. Took me longer than it should have to realize it was a true alarm and not just the movie! Sent from my SPH-L710 using proboards
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kilroy
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Post by kilroy on Nov 16, 2013 12:59:39 GMT -5
Sam, the dorms at my college were mostly really old wooden structures and during drills we were timed to make sure everyone got out in under 3 minutes. Thank goodness it was only 3 floors! As for fire drills, haven't had to do one at my current job yet but took the ones at my old job very seriously, especially after 9/11. We had a bomb scare on 9/12/01 and we all couldn't get down the stairs fast enough.
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regina24601
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Post by regina24601 on Nov 16, 2013 13:30:21 GMT -5
sam - I only worked on the 14th floor, but I had to participate in a fire drill when I was 8 months pregnant. In December. Stupidly having worn heels that day. Not happy was I.
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sarcasticgirl
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Post by sarcasticgirl on Nov 16, 2013 20:54:07 GMT -5
I work in a 40 floor building and our fire drills consist of going down like 2 flights of stairs to a different floor where some ex fire marshall talks to us. they've never made us clear all the floors. If I had to do that, i'd just keep walking to the train and go home.
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Phoenix84
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Post by Phoenix84 on Nov 17, 2013 0:01:01 GMT -5
We do fire drills at work. But There's only like 15 people who work in my building. And it's only one floor, so it's not a big deal.
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justme
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Post by justme on Nov 17, 2013 1:08:17 GMT -5
I remember the fire drills in college, or rather real fire alarms. It sucked when someone would leave a pizza in the oven too long and we'd have to get up and out of the building at 3:00 a.m. in the middle of January....
Ah, the joys of dorm living.... We never had them that early (probably thanks to the awesome pizza joints that stayed open til 4am for the drunks), but it often happened during the day. It got so bad that the university set a new policy that if the fire alarm goes off and there's nothing burning you get fined $300. When my RA told us my response was "You do realize that will just make people start actual fires to avoid the fine right?" Though I don't remember any false alarms after that. Those alarms were horrible - I was in an apartment so there was one of the industrial fire alarms in each bedroom, one in the hall, and one in the living room...so SIX of them in one apartment that was at most 1000 sf, it was deafening. What's worse is I live downtown now and the building is mostly younger people. There was a stretch there where some drunk kept pulling the fire alarm at like 3 am on a Fri or Sat night. It happened every few weeks for a few months. One time an asshole pulled it at 3am when it was pouring rain outside. It was solved with throwing down a $500 fine for anyone that pulls it, which with security cameras they can track em down easy enough, and the wording maybe alluded to them kicking out the person responsible since it stopped after that.
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Sharon
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Post by Sharon on Nov 17, 2013 9:48:40 GMT -5
We have false fire alarms 2-3 times a year. If the water pressure in the area falls too low the alarms go off because if there should happen to be a fire then the sprinkler systems wouldn't have enough pressure to work. We can always tell when it is one of those types of alarms because the two big medical clinics nearby are also evacuating. The strangest one was the time we didn't evacuate. We stood at the window and watched the bomb squad suit up enter the first floor of the building. They didn't feel that there was enough danger to evacuate. In the end it turned out the mailroom had received an odd envelope and called the police. The police called the bomb squad. Someone was unhappy with their bill and had filled the return envelope full of toothpaste. How it made it through the postal service machines without breaking open and squirting toothpaste everywhere, who knows.
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econstudent
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Post by econstudent on Nov 17, 2013 10:56:26 GMT -5
sam - I only worked on the 14th floor, but I had to participate in a fire drill when I was 8 months pregnant. In December. Stupidly having worn heels that day. Not happy was I. I wouldn't be happy either. Our building only has about 10 floors, but they let people with certain "disabilities," including pregnancy, skip the drills. There is a special room on every floor they can go to and they have to have a pass to get in.
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