Double Fire Drill

With all the natural calamities and man-made disasters happening everywhere, it's always important to be prepared. And for some establishments and organizations, it is their primary responsibility to ensure none of these tragedies occur. I work in a 27-storey building in downtown Oakland, and this was exactly what the building management did. We had a fire drill.

Early part of this week, an email was sent out by the building management informing all its tenants of a planned fire drill. I've been working in the same building for over 6 years so I know the routine. I got the email, but the date never registered in my head. It's one of those things that you brush aside.

Wednesday. A normal day. Except that it was probably the busiest day in my workweek. Wednesdays are always busy because of our weekly 2-hour staff meetings. With about 20 minutes into the meeting, the siren went off, emergency lights started blinking, and a voice came through the speakers asking everyone to vacate their offices. All were surprised (that the drill was that Wednesday). We all looked at each other and sighed. At least, I was not the only one with the same sentiment.

The procedure was for "evacuees" to go 4 floors down from wherever they were, using the stairs, of course. The fire drill wasn't conducted simultaneously on all 27 floors. I could not imagine how that would look. It would have been chaotic. As far as I know, the drill was performed a few floors at a time. And even that was a bit comical. People were following others as they went down the stairs without counting the number of floors.

Since the siren was loud enough to be heard from adjacent floors (up and down), some tenants thought it was their turn to evacuate, even if the emergency lights weren't blinking. This added to the confusion. You had more people moving around than was necessary. The biggest problem is always at the end when everyone had to go back to their offices. Just imagine how congested the elevators were. For the impatient ones, they took the stairs, 4 floors up.

My department was special, at least, on that day. We didn't do the fire drill once, but TWICE !!!

That Wednesday, our meeting was held at a 13th floor conference room. When the alarm sounded, we proceeded to the 9th, as instructed. While we waited for the "all clear" signal, we decided to continue our meeting at my boss' office on the 17th floor. Then, the unexpected. Barely 5 minutes into the meeting, the siren sounded for the 17th floor !!! We had to go, AGAIN. We tried to talk our way out of doing it since we already did it, but to no avail. Off we went, 4 floors down. How lucky can we be?

At least, we can brag that we've mastered the art of evacuating a high-rise building in Oakland.