What is a 'fire drill'?

What is a 'fire drill'?

A fire drill is a very important practice and a test of our fire evacuation and response procedures. It's very important that they be robustly done. For example, we strongly advise schools to do what we call "blocked access fire drills." To tell in advance staff, they'll do this and to prepare staff and students to think if they ever were to go to an exit and it might be blocked. We need to be sure that we're drilling our staff on properly supervising the children. The fire brigade very frequently work with schools to help them improve supervision during a fire drill so that under stress, they will improve supervision during a real fire so a child doesn't get away from them and become endangered. It's a chance to practice our plans. Fires occur almost every day in American, K through 12 schools. We haven't had a fire death since 1958 that I'm aware of in an American school because of drastic modifications after 95 children were killed in a Catholic school in Chicago by a fourth grader using fire as his weapon. That even taught us that fire drills are critical for saving lives.