Fire Drill Readiness

Holding fire drills is an important part of helping your employees know what to do in the event of a fire or other sort of evacuation.

To get ready for your fire drill, it is best to have a document that describes what you would do in the event of an emergency. This is called your emergency response plan (ERP). This will help provide the framework for how you ensure you are on track for your drills.

Planning and preparation is also important as you get ready for your drills. Here are a few suggestions as you move forward. Some will not apply as much as others, depending on the type of drill that you conduct with your company.

• Speak with other leaders in the organization to get buy in and support. Safety starts from the top and works its way down. This will also help with scheduling as you get ready for your drill

• Sending out communication in advance to those participating in the drill so that they can be prepared.

• Choose your type of drill that you are going to conduct (I have put these in progressive order for least to most involved/complex)

  • Review the ERP and discuss who is doing what

  • Conduct a table top drill with a scenario and all participants taking part in what they would do in that scenario

  • Evacuation drills involve leaving the building- building up this level would be timing the drills

  • Scenario based evacuation drill

• Evaluation is an important part of the drill process to see how you might improve for the next time you do a drill

Hopefully this give you a better idea of what to plan and prepare for when getting ready to do a drill. I created a checklist for how to plan ahead for your drill, giving you tasks to do before, during and after. You can get a copy here!