Fire Drills During Rehearsals

[MNicolai]

I was perusing [user]Teqniqal[/user]'s blog when I stumbled across this article he wrote on teaching safety to students. In particular, this section caught my eye.

You can expand your Fire & Emergency Training to have fire exit drills in the middle of show rehearsals. Start out easy and get them to understand that getting out of the building is a priority, then later you can 'complicate' their decision making by making them find and take a different route by declaring the 'obvious' or 'regular' route as "not available." People tend to exit buildings the same way they came in. You have to challenge them to find and know alternate routes should their typical or normal one be blocked.

I've never thought about doing this before, but it makes complete sense. In October I worked a haunted house where the first night it was open to the public, we had the alarms go off. A couple nights earlier we had gone through a drill with test patrons and event staff, so we knew what to do. Still, it was a mess. Radios didn't work. Who was going to call the fire department? Does the system in this 80-year old school actually notify the fire department upon being tripped? Then we were faced with the most difficult obstacle -- the real patrons thought the alarm buzzers were part of the show, and in a building not equipped with strobes, it took convincing to get patrons evacuated. After that, we had to split up and determine how the alarm was tripped. In doing so, we were not well-equipped enough to differentiate between ordinary volunteers for the haunted house and the "real" event staff who were cleared for access to the building in the event of an emergency to determine the nature of the alarm. Once the fire department showed up, what were we going to do next?

Mind you, we were equipped well-enough staff-wise. We had plenty of event staff members for the building, fire extinguishers distributed all over, two-way radio communications, paramedics on site for the entirety of the event each night, and a Fire Watch team wearing fluorescent orange vests whose sole purpose was to spread out and monitor the entire building and supervise the event the entire evening.

With all of that in place, the first real alarm showed us all of our inadequacies. The radio communications were awful. The name tags didn't distinguish between event staff in charge (except for Fire Watch members) of securing the building versus who were volunteers just there for the night as spooks wearing costumes. The real curve ball was that we never anticipated that people would hear the alarm system and not realize that it wasn't part of the haunt, but a legitimate fire alarm.

Then what we weren't prepared for was when the system tripped two times in one night. The first time, which the fire department showed up for, was a false alarm given by a faulty pull station. "A freak accident," the fire marshal called it. Then when it happened again, some people were so tired of it, including the 400 patrons waiting in line, and 200 progressing through the haunt, that people didn't want to leave because the first time was a false alarm. Turned out, the second time we found out the hard way the smoke detectors in the building were still active in the building and our fog machines had set them off. Our first fire drill wasn't remotely long enough to have built up enough fog to set the alarms off.

I even know people who work in office buildings who are instructed to not leave their cubicles during fire alarms unless they smell smoke.

So with all of that in mind, how do you create a realistic enough fire drill, and how do you carry it out effectively enough that it actually provides the necessary education for your staff members, students, or whomever else you are working with? Do you go so far as to ask the fire department to show up to a drill, a drill that you have not notified anyone on your staff is going to take place?

 

[chris325]

And how often do you hold such drills as to avoid getting everyone involved so used to them that they do not treat them like just another drill? It's very optimistic -- hopelessly romantic even -- to say that everyone should always treat every single alarm like the real thing, but in practice, it's an unrealistic goal, especially if students are involved. I've always laughed at the required monthly fire drills at the local schools, because students evacuate because they have to while in classes. What the high school found out during an actual alarm taking place when students were hanging around after school, some in extracurriculars and others just sitting around in the hallways, was that no one evacuated. Some teachers scratched their heads, looked down the hallways and saw nothing that made them think it was a real alarm, and they didn't bother to encourage evacuation. Students? They just kept sitting or standing wherever they were. Some moved away from the horns so they wouldn't go deaf, but no one really treated it like a legitimate alarm.

It seems strange that a legitimate fire alarm after school didn't result in complete evacuation of the building. During a musical rehearsal last year, a real fire alarm went off, and the entire cast was evacuated along with all other extracurricular activities going on at the time. It did help that cast members realized that it wasn't a drill because it was after school, and had the sense to leave the building as instructed by the director.

I'm surprised staff members weren't previously trained to get everyone out if a fire alarm goes off after school. If a teacher leading an extracurricular activity disregards a fire alarm that he or she does not have any reason to believe is a drill, that seems to me like very poor judgement.

EDIT: I arrived at school this morning for a show to see large masses of people outside. The alarms had gone off with a wrestling match and volleyball game going on, and we needed to be inside soon to prepare for a show in an hour and a half. We ended up waiting outside for half an hour in cast member's cars for an all clear to go back in. Everyone had evacuated the building, and no one reentered until permission was given. (Making me wonder how students were still inside in your situation, MNicolai.)

We ended up having to to costumes/makeup super quickly to get ready for the show.

 

[KeepOnTruckin]

How do we, especially in the live event industry and in educational venues, make sure things like that don't happen?

I was in a recently built college residence hall for a fire drill. They had what I thought was a good system for forcing everyone to evacuate: First, they put fire strobes in every room. Then they installed a very loud speaker system that first blasted an air raid siren and then had a recorded voice say "An emergency situation has been reported, please use exit stairs immediately." It was very loud. Also, when fire alarms took place, the TV and internet are disabled, so that students would have less reason to want to stay.

But I think by far the siren and recorded voice was the most effective part. It was almost scary. Much more effective than just a regular alarm blaring out

 

[LightingMike]

So who dose fire drills during rehearsals? I have never done any, but can see the need to go over it at least once so the cast and crew have an idea what they should do. Things such as bringing up house and work lights if they don't come on by themselves. Turning off Audio and music so there is less distractions.

I have worked on haunted attractions before and was told by Fire Dept that we had to have a way of turning off all effects, show lighting, and sounds and turning on work/evac lights. This could be doing automatically or as we did have a person stationed at a breaker panel and brake off all effects and make sure all work lights where on. This sudden stop of effects and lights coming on made it clear to all that something was wrong and it was time to leave.

 

[NickVon]

You sir bring up an intresting discussion.

I have to agree with (Haunted House) that your best way to make sure patron know to leave is have either on your light board or break panel all things like strobes and audio able to be cut off immediately and perhaps a sub-master on the light board or what ever your work lights might be in the space rigged to come on. Provided an Audio system, you could always switch over to a "evacuation" audio recording in addition to whatever fire alarms installed on premises might be going off.

regarding the OP, i think he was talking about running a fire drill simply with in the Theatre performance space and not in reaction to a school wide drill. As sometimes Evacuation your Tech, Cast, and Staff can have added complexity if you have crew in follow spot position, know what equipment to shut down immediately (as mentioned earlier - Audio Effects) Know where the Theater wide godmic is to provide direction to patrons etc.

I don't think his post was in conjunction with a school wide evac but with a practice drill with in the theatre alone.

 

[NickVon]

I was in a recently built college residence hall for a fire drill. They had what I thought was a good system for forcing everyone to evacuate: First, they put fire strobes in every room. Then they installed a very loud speaker system that first blasted an air raid siren and then had a recorded voice say "An emergency situation has been reported, please use exit stairs immediately." It was very loud. Also, when fire alarms took place, the TV and internet are disabled, so that students would have less reason to want to stay.

But I think by far the siren and recorded voice was the most effective part. It was almost scary. Much more effective than just a regular alarm blaring out

Freshman year of college during orientation the Girls dorm had a fire alarm go off, very simliar to the one you described. Word was after talking to my friends it really scared them at first to here the strange man's voice in there bedrooms. 3 months later the girls dorm fire alarm announcer is now a female voice.

 

[MNicolai]

I don't think his post was in conjunction with a school wide evac but with a practice drill with in the theatre alone.

Correct. I want to discuss fire drills during rehearsals. Both on a professional plane as well as an educational level.

 

[Pixie]

I think a fire drill would of been great to have done. Several years ago during a summer community youth program i was stage managing, we had an electrical fire during one of our shows. being youth, i was stage managing 9 year olds to 19 year olds. 3 story building with the children on the top. After hearing over headset that they wanted a "Second" fire extinguisher for the "very small fire" they had reported, i immediatly went into evac. mode.
Not having being told any policy before, i went with my gut... sent my head tech person upstairs to start an evac (we had some parents with the kids) brought up the house lights, went out on stage, made an announcement to the audience to leave the building to the parking accross the road, got my cast off stage and out the backdoor to the other parking lot. Being the stage manager, i didn't want to leave until i knew my entire cast was out, so i did a final sweep.. with two dads following me, yelling at me to leave teh building that they would check. My show, my theatre, my job.
Thank god everything was fine, producers/owner was called made aware, show commenced after we got the all clear from the fire dept.

 

[chris325]

I'm impressed that you were able to stay calm and control the situation, considering there wasn't a specific procedure to use in the event of a fire. If you haven't already, a clear, concise evacuation plan should be put into place at your facility in case something happens like that again (if you still work in that building.)

 

[Pixie]

I'm sure they probably have one (i dont work there anymore), but they had never discussed them with those of us working.
College i am at now also has one in place, but we've never done a "fire drill during a rehearsal" so i'm pretty sure half my cast would just look at me like a deer in headlights until i start talking. Then again, they are a little older...

 

[hslighting]

Although this is an old thread I think it should be revived as it is important. In my high school I have never heard of any specialized plan for an alarm during a performance. I am thinking about approaching my director to discuss this with everyone at the beginning-of-the-year, everyone-must-attend Tech Meeting. Eventually, maybe during a final dress, he could walk in and just announce, a fire alarm has just been triggered, what will you do? And evaluate everyone's performance?
But here's my real question, if our ushers are all students, should they be assigned to evacuate the audience? They are students, and even if an adult volunteer is standing with them, that adult cannot prevent them from being potentially hurt. So do they stay and assist, or do they open the doors and not look back?

 

[MNicolai]

Open the doors and not look back. If you have house staff trained to coordinate an evacuation a couple sections of seating at a time, then by all means go for it, but chances are students are going to be deer in the headlights for an actual emergency or drill. We have a coordinated plan and trained staff and still have our fingers crossed people will know what to do in the event of any flavor of emergency.

Ultimately it's up to the house manager to coordinate the evacuation and up to the house staff to execute it. If you don't have people at every performance assigned to certain doorways, don't bother -- the alarms will have been going off for several minutes by the time the students have decided who's doing what, and by then the audience will already be headed out the doors.

In an ideal world, the house or stage manager takes the stage briefly to announce to everyone to follow the direction of the house staff near their seating areas, but really with the horns blaring nobody is going to be able to hear anyone trying to shout across an 800-seat theatre.

The added layer of complexity in a situation like that is the number of people who will try to take control of the situation before anyone actually takes control of the situation (stage manager, technical director, production director, some student offstage right, some parent sitting in the third row). The simplest and most reliable formula is the alarms = evacuation. More important is that people know in the event of a fire where things are (exits, extinguishers, fire curtain pull ring, house lights button).

If there's a situation you want to give some real thought to though, poke around and see if you can find a plan for the entire audience, cast, and crew to seek shelter in the event of a tornado. The school district I went to initially only planned for a daytime situation where there were only 50 students in the theatre who would be directed to go to the dressing rooms. More recent discussions have resulted in our safety committee reviewing and establishing safe areas in the theatre's corridors and adjacent school, designated with TORNADO SHELTER signs on the walls of each zone.

 

[tdeater]

It is very hard to create realistic fire drills that do not introduce a larger liability issue. In a school building I work at we started blocking exits and making them find another one. We also grab any students we find in the hallways before the drill to test to see if the teacher notices they are gone. Neither thing usually go well. Our last fire drill, while we where clearing the building, we found a teacher in her room with some students. The drill was scheduled for a couple of days before that but got postponed. She assumed it was the drill and they where busy with something. When asked how she knew for sure it was a drill, she said she tried to call the office and nobody answered. So, basically she did not. The building principal re-educated her. Funny enough, half an hour later another fire alarm went off from the kitchen forgetting to turn their exhaust hoods back on from the first alarm. She left that time.

I think doing drills as unannounced as possible helps make them more realistic. We have groups that rent our theater frequently, so I am tempted to trigger a drill when they are there one day to see if they actually paid attention to our trainings.

 

[hslighting]

Yeah i just think a drill, even without blocked exits, would be good to see if the actors and techs know to calmly leave through the nearest exit and meet at x location, see if the sound guys remember to mute the show audio and turn on a god mic, see if the lighting guys bring up everything (i do not believe any of the tech is tied into the alarm system, we dont even have a fire curtain), ect.