Drill Thrills

Today, while walking down 6 flights of stairs inside a hot and claustrophobic stairwell, I suddenly missed my old job. Why, you may ask? Well, mainly because fire drills in my previous job didn’t involve walking down numerous flights of stairs. Haha! :P

Kidding aside, today’s fire drill brought with it new experiences for me. I got to see real firemen use a real water hose to put out a fake fire. I saw real medics letting “injured” employees ride in a real ambulance to treat their fake injuries. A volunteer employee was even asked to operate a real fire extinguisher to extinguish a staged and controlled fire. All these we watched under the scorching heat of the after-lunch-sun. Ugh.

Once the drill was done, the evacuated employees were asked to go back to work. Simple math and logic dictates that given the 4 elevator units our building had, with a maximum of, say 15 people each, with 20plus floors to re-populate… it would take quite sometime to be able to go back to work without falling in the elevator-line for a long time. As such, Mello and I decided to pass time and quench our thirst by treating ourselves to Mcdo milkshakes. Nice! :D

More than the cool display of firemen and medics in action, I realized that fire drills, including the ones conducted in my previous job, should ask volunteers to test and use their existing fire equipment, such as extinguishers. This exercise not only assures its observers that the establishment's equipment works, but it also shows the observers how to use them, should they need to use them someday.