To Mr.Fox and the "list;"
Yes, a fire alarm / evacuation that upon investigation is determined to be
false is considered a "fire drill" for the purposes of training residents
and staff.   At least here at St.Michael's College in Vermont.   This is
actually how most of our "drills" occur.    We have had so many "drills," in
fact, that we recently hired a contract guard to walk a beat in one of four
dorms in our first-year housing, specifically to deter such activity.

Usually the first one or two fire alarms in this first-year housing are
followed by constructive critique with the campus (student club) fire
department, rescue, residential life staff, student assistants, and security
staff.   After that alarms are quite smooth with:
*        security first responding and updating the fire department,
        *       residential life and student assistants taking care of
evacuation (they check EVERY room EVERY time),
        *        the fire department assuming command on arrival, going back
through to look for fire conditions, then giving the ok to reset.

Its a pretty smooth system here, and by the time the residents move into 3rd
and 4th year housing they know the system and need very little training.

St.Mike's has conducted regular daily and weekly fire drills in certain
housing clusters when there have been problems with failure to evacuate or
the electricians found that students were tampering with the system.   This
has fixed the problem individuals or incited the rest of the residents into
watching out for vandalism.   This is not a frequent problem.

J.Mossman III
Security Officer and Fire Prevention Officer
Saint Michael's College Safety&Security
Colchester, VT

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> Reply To:     International Association of Campus Fire Safety Officials
> Sent:         Tuesday, May 02, 2000 11:59 AM
> To:   [log in to unmask]
> Subject:      Fire Drills
>
> I would like to throw this out to the list:
>
> If a fire alarm is activated in a building, and upon arrival, the
> responders
> find that it is a false alarm, then the responders make sure the building
> has
> been fully evacuated, does this constitute a fire drill?
>
> MJF
>
> Michael Fox
> Dep. Fire Inspector
> Yale University
> Office of the Fire Marshal
> 314 Prospect Street
> New Haven, CT 06515
> voice: 203-432-9924
> fax: 203-432-8937
> email: [log in to unmask]
>