It Starts with a Fire Drill

We have observed that the commonplace “Fire Drill” being conducted in many offices is painfully inadequate. Sometimes they are performed as part of an overall all-hazards emergency response planning structure, but mostly fire drills are held as a perfunctory item on one of many checklist items from local officials and/or building or facilities management. Staff rarely know what to do, where to go, and the “what if’s” that they need to know to protect themselves and their co-workers and visitors from harm.

It is our opinion that these fire drills should be integrated into an organization’s overall all-hazards Emergency Action Plans and follow the Federal Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP) design and construct:

· the HSEEP design provides a consistent and thorough process for identifying and evaluation key metrics to be exercised and evaluated,

· the organization’s own emergency response team members gain experience with both the exercise process — for future, more complex exercises, such as Active Assailant — and they also benefit from understanding their role in an Incident Command System (ICS) structure as part of the Operations Branch, and possibly part of Unified Command. Fire Drills can be the best, first building block in aligning an organization’s general staff to larger, more complex exercises and drills.