Did you ever have to evacuate a building?

Only when we did tornado drills in school.

Oops! I mean fire drills. Please don’t go outside if there is a tornado. lol.

I’ve been in several evacutions at work due to fires (actual fires with actual flames that the fire brigade had to come and sort out) but I’ve never had to leave the building I’m in. In fact I’ve never had to leave the floor I’m working on. I work in a hospital so evacuating the building completely is a pain in the arse and even getting patients down one floor is a major logistical knightmare. So what we do is move along to the next fire compartment and wait for the fire brigade to sort things out.

@ANef_is_Enuf so what do you do in a tornado drill?

@Lightlyseared in school? We lined up in the hallways and curled up on the floor… which almost always guaranteed having to stick your face uncomfortably close to your classmate’s rear end for no real good reason.
Looks like this, except that we often had multiple rows (which is how you ended up being a bit too friendly.)

@ANef_is_Enuf shouldn’t the people standing up be on the floor cowering too or torndaoes only effect kids?

Haha. Hopefully in the event of a real tornado, everyone will get on the floor and hug their neighbor’s butt.
Sorry for derailing.

Last winter in Connecticut we had to evacuate our building because of snow load on the roof that was causing deformation of the roof trusses. It wasn’t on the order of a fire drill, but they wanted us packed up and out of the building within a half-hour or less. I think a lot of people in our area faced similar situations. (And there were a number of building collapses due to excessive snow load.)

Other than that, no “for real” evacuations other than fire drills a couple of times per year, which are taken seriously here. “Everybody out”, and we’re timed on the evac. The building is checked by security for stragglers before we’re allowed back in. We don’t fool around with fire drills – until we get to the parking lot / assembly area.

Last semester there was a gas leak in the college, so we all had to evacuate the building. I was on my break waiting for my next class. I didn’t even bother going to that class because it looked like we were not going inside for a long time.

Several times. The most notable was during a loss of power to a highrise in Dallas, and I walked down almost 40 flights of stairs. I was unable to walk for a few days following that. Not good. I think it was a construction boo-boo that clipped the power to the area, and everyone moved along nicely with no real incidents.

Years later, we evacuated a highrise in Austin due to a bomb threat (during the Clarence Thomas hearings). Seems a former boyfriend of Anita Hill officed in the building. Turned out to be a false alarm. Again, no incidents of any kind to report.

All we did was walk out into the snow at 9:30 PM because a stupid cow set off the fire alarm for somehow setting the company’s microwave on fire or so I heard.

@King_Pariah – How did a cow get in your lunchroom?

We had a small grease fire in the kitchen at work once. I still don’t know why they pulled the fire alarm when they could have used one of the two fire extinguishers that were right there.

*facepalm

Sorry, in college cow=junior year student. Firsties=seniors, Cows=junior, Yuk/Yearling=sophomore, Plebe=freshman/slave/pile of shit

AH-HA! Thank you for the clarification. I wondered if you worked at a very free-range dairy farm.

A number of years ago, I was in a grocery store when here was an earth quake. Stuff was being thrown from the shelves onto the floor. Everyone was asked to leave the store. The doors were locked and those of us who had groceries that hadn’t been paid for stood there and waited until the doors were opened again so we could go back in and pay for our stuff.

Oh yes. We have evacuations at work to make sure we all know what to do if the real thing happens.

When I was in London and staying in a hotel, the fire alarm went off at 2 am and we all had to troop down the stairs and out into the street. It was a false alarm as it turned out thank goodness.

I felt fine. Tired. Still had jet lag and we were a bit disoriented. Glad it wasn’t a real fire. There were people still on the top floor looking out of the windows when we had made it down the stairs and out. Good job it wasn’t the real thing.