By Elora Brow
Staff Writer
After a fire alarm went off in a classroom, students and teachers were instructed to evacuate from their classrooms. Although there is always room for improvement, Mira Costa has had many evacuation drills this year so students and teachers were able to evacuate to the best of their abilities.
This evacuation was not a drill so teachers were brought to surprise in this situation. After Principal Dr. Ben Dale announced over loud-speaker that it was not a drill, teachers proceeded to evacuate their students to their designated evacuation spots on the football and baseball fields. Students remained on the field for a short period of time before being cleared to go back to class.
According to Security Lead, Ray Lee, everyone evacuated as quickly as possible and although it was not perfect, they did as best as they could in the circumstances and the faculty and staff showed that their top priority is the safety of the students. It is important that all the buildings were evacuated as quickly as possible and that the teachers and staff showed highest priority to the students because then it helps ensure the students that they are safe.
According to Vice Principal Jon Shaw, another important aspect in this evacuation is that the site commanders and site runners were easily able to identify the teachers with their classroom signs. This is extremely important because it helps ensure that everyone gets out safely and once all classes are identified, it can help speed up the process of giving the all clear for students and teachers to go back to class.
Although the evacuation was an improvement from prior instances, there are still adjustments that need to be made. Sophomore Lily Raffety was on the basement level of the math and science building when the fire alarm went off. According to Raffety she is currently on crutches and is unable to use the stairs so when the elevators wouldn’t work, she became worried. After the elevator didn’t arrive, she slowly crutched up the stairs to ground level. This is a safety serious hazard considering that it took her much longer than the average time to evacuate the building.
According to Shaw the elevators are not tied to the alarms, so the alarm had no effect on the elevator not working. Shaw stated that one of the elevators has been having trouble lately and that maintenance is aware of it. Although it is good that maintenance is aware of it, it is still dangerous for the elevator to not be working 100% of the time because in the case of a big emergency, students will need to exit the buildings as fast as they can.
Disorganization on the fields was a large problem as well. The locations of where students are to line up with their teachers gets very sloppy. As shown during the most recent evacuation, the second all students get to the fields they talk to their peers around them and then the classes all come together instead of being separated in neat, individual lines. If the locations for each class were more specific, then the teachers would have an easier time keeping their entire class together.
Overall the fire evacuation went as smoothly as it could have at the moment. Although it went well, there is always room for improvement from the students, faculty, and staff. Mira Costa has done a very good job at preparing the students and staff for many different circumstances and it definitely shows through these processes.
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