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Fire drill

Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2005-04-12 07:53:39 - Graham Ellis

I was grateful for an unscheduled fire drill recently. Our training centre's fitted with smoke, fire and burglar alarms and hooked up to the emergency services too - it's far more thorough than is required by law - but while tests are clearly just tests, there's been the element of doubt as to how it will work at a real event.

I was presenting a course - Perl, I think - here recently and the alarm directly outside the training room door went off. Course stops imediately. "Probably nothing, but we had better evacuate" says I ... and the whole thing worked a treat. A couple of tiny lessons learnt, and I'm very happy for that.

Oh - yes - it was a "false alarm". A torch was being used to remove old paint, and sufficient had been burnt off to trigger the system. Good to be re-assured that it works.