Wednesday, February 02, 2005
Fire Drills
"Tomorrow at 2:15 pm (corrected for daylight savings time, of couse) we will be having a fire drill. Please make your way out through the doors at the northeast corner of the building calmly and quietly, and proceed to the football field. There you will be checked off of the master list, rechecked, cross-checked, and tabulated to make absolutely certain no one is missing. Please be patient while this is taking place."
Anyone who has ever experienced the idiocy of a fire drill will know where I'm coming from on this. Here are four reasons why the fire drill is a completely pointless exercise in time-wasting:
1) The average fire tends to strike suddenly and without warning, not at 2:15 pm and corrected for daylight savings time.
2) It's difficult to exit via the doors at the northeast corner of the building if the northeast corner of the building is on fire.
3) Who walks calmly and quietly away from a raging inferno?
4) By the time everyone arrives at the football field and gets checked, rechecked, cross-checked, and tabulated, anyone who's not there will long since have become a charred skeleton.
Clearly no aspect of this so-called "fire drill" corresponds in any way with the kind of conditions you would be likely to encounter in an actual fire situation. So what's the point of fire drills at all? If the fire alarm goes off, go outside. Even George W. Bush could figure that one out. There's nothing like a nice useless fire drill to interrupt the day, irreparably screw up whatever was going on at the time, and inconvenience the hell out of everyone involved. The time you spend on fire drills will never do you any good, and you're never getting that time back. And all the time spent on fire drills at public school is costing the government money that could definitely be put to better use.
Fire drills are useless, but no one seems to have figured that out yet. Think about it, guys.
Anyone who has ever experienced the idiocy of a fire drill will know where I'm coming from on this. Here are four reasons why the fire drill is a completely pointless exercise in time-wasting:
1) The average fire tends to strike suddenly and without warning, not at 2:15 pm and corrected for daylight savings time.
2) It's difficult to exit via the doors at the northeast corner of the building if the northeast corner of the building is on fire.
3) Who walks calmly and quietly away from a raging inferno?
4) By the time everyone arrives at the football field and gets checked, rechecked, cross-checked, and tabulated, anyone who's not there will long since have become a charred skeleton.
Clearly no aspect of this so-called "fire drill" corresponds in any way with the kind of conditions you would be likely to encounter in an actual fire situation. So what's the point of fire drills at all? If the fire alarm goes off, go outside. Even George W. Bush could figure that one out. There's nothing like a nice useless fire drill to interrupt the day, irreparably screw up whatever was going on at the time, and inconvenience the hell out of everyone involved. The time you spend on fire drills will never do you any good, and you're never getting that time back. And all the time spent on fire drills at public school is costing the government money that could definitely be put to better use.
Fire drills are useless, but no one seems to have figured that out yet. Think about it, guys.
# posted by Ben @ 6:43 AM 
