non-Katrina related emergency evacuation - most decide to stay

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Yesterday I, along with several thousand other people, was required to attend a divisional meeting, which was held at a basketball arena. About midway through this festival of [del]bullshit[/del] important information concerning our company’s future, the lights dimmed, the stage and big screen televisions went dark, emergency lights started flashing, and a klaxon began to honk over the P.A. system. An announcement came on: “There is an emergency which requires the building to be evacuated immediately. Please proceed to the nearest exit.”

I was sitting at the end of a row and immediately got up and left. Almost every one else just sat there. I really think that they were waiting for the VP leading the meeting to tell them to leave (although the mikes were dead and few would’ve heard him). At the exit, a security guard was telling people it was a false alarm. Only about 30 people had left the auditorium, and it looked like most of them left just so they could use the bathroom.

About an hour later it happened again. This time we also got big red messages on the electronic scoreboard instructing everyone to evacuate. Not a soul, including me, got up to leave. About two minutes later the power came back on and the meeting continued.

It’s good that there wasn’t really a life-threatening emergency. It would’ve taken at least 10 minutes to get everyone out of the building, even if they’d started leaving immediately. I was just very surprised that so few people responded to the flashing lights, klaxon, and visual and audio instructions to leave. What was everyone waiting for?

2

If you can’t see the smoke, there is no fire.

Decades of false fire alarms in office buildings inure many to their klaxon. We’re all going to fry that one time where a timely evacuation is indeed necessary, as everyone will wait for an announcement and then, absent the smell of something burning, take their sweet time. The moment there’s smoke or a burning smell, panic will ensue.

3

My company has always been excellent about (almost) everyone properly evacuating when the fire alarm goes off. I don’t know why. I remember an incident where the fire alarm went off when they hadn’t planned for a test. The company-wide email afterward said the fire department was rather pleased with us, because we did a good job of leaving the building properly, even without knowing if it was real or not. The corporate office has two-to-three thousand people working on the campus, so this isn’t just a case of half a dozen people leaving the building.

4

My first thought when the emergency alarms went off was “bomb threat”. Although of course there are no disgruntled employees at my company, several thousand employees were told that they HAD to attend this meeting, many of them on a day they weren’t scheduled to work or despite the fact that they had to work night shift that night or the night before. The locale of the meeting was inconvenient for everyone, and there were no shuttle busses. There was a bit of grumbling about the cost of gas, Parking, at least, was free.