The Spectator

We’ve all done it a hundred times - it’s the annoying fire drill. Even at school when it meant 20 minutes out of class chatting with friends on the oval, I still found fire drills annoying - the having to get up, make my way outside in whatever the weather of the day was and line up to get your name ticked off.

This week I discovered what has been missing from fire drills - realism and excitement!

We were warned at work on Monday that there was going to be a fire drill on Tuesday. Oh joy.

On Tuesday morning we saw a “fire warden” safety hat and vest get delivered to our office manager (and I did think, perhaps she should always have it, and not just on the drill days). I had forgotten about it by the time the fire alarm awoke me from my work daze in the afternoon.

I duly got up, grabbed my phone which was next to me and walked outside to the marshalling area under instruction from our “warden” (who was dressed like Bob the Builder).

With the circus which ensued, I can’t blame passers by from stopping to take a look. I think it must have been a drill more for the emergency services than it was for us.

It was the most realistic fire drill I had ever seen - all that was missing was the smoke.

We had sirens, fire engines, firemen, ambulances, fire hoses, traffic cones to block off the street, stretchers, (pretend) trapped people inside, genuinely complacent people inside ignoring the alarm, and a TV News crew!!

A short time later our accountant who was in town during the drill was on her way back to the office in a taxi only to be told by the driver “we can’t go there, there’s a big fire and a traffic jam!”

Here are my photos (taken again with my trusty phone camera) of the drama unfolding…