What is a fire drill?
Q: What is a fire drill?
A: A fire drill is a sudden practice event, where people leave a building. They are practicing what they would do if there was a fire in the building.
Q: How does the fire drill start?
A: The event is started when the fire alarm goes off. The fire alarm sound can either be a continuous metal bell, a horn or a two-tone siren.
Q: What happens during an evacuation?
A: During an evacuation, the entire building is evacuated and everybody leaves the building using the nearest fire exit. At a school, college or university, the teacher or lecturer counts the people outside to find out if anyone is missing.
Q: What happens in case of false alarms?
A: Sometimes people are evacuated when a drill is not scheduled by the school. This is called a false alarm.
Q: How often should organizations in UK conduct drills?
A: According to current UK government laws, any organization in the UK should conduct a fire drill once every year. In addition to sounding the fire alarms for regular drills during term time, regular health and safety checks such as testing of fire alarm systems and extinguishers must be done weekly.
Q: How does it differ from US regulations?
A: In United States different states have laws that say how often schools must have drills - for example many states require one per month with alarms set to different codes such as code 3.
Q: Are there other types of drills besides those conducted in buildings? A: Fire drills commonly take place in schools, colleges and public companies but on public transport such as cruise ships it's called muster drill while on airplanes passengers are told to take safety brace position on hearing "brace" command instead of having an actual drill
