Faulty Fire Alarms Cause Commotion
By Jisela Negrete
By Jisela Negrete
When a fire alarm goes off, teachers evacuate their students immediately and grab their emergency folder as they walk out to their assigned meeting spot. However, the large number of false alarms has prompted students to not react and for teachers to stay in place as everyone waits for the announcement of a false alarm.
On Friday, November 19, 2021 at 10:59 AM an email was sent to all staff about a faulty sensor for one of the alarms that was causing all the false alerts. It was advised to not evacuate if the fire alarms were continuing to get triggered falsely, unless announced to evacuate.
The frequent falsely-triggered fire alarms still send a message to the fire department, this potentially could cause problems for the actual emergencies they have to respond to.
“When the fire alarm goes off the fire department is called which means they start to respond to that alarm, you could be lying in the street bleeding to death and they’re not going to come to you because they think Pioneer High School has a fire,” said physics teacher Colleen McDonough.
Students share similar concerns as teachers regarding the frequency of the fire alarms.
“I’m concerned for when there is an actual emergency and we just ignore it because we think it’s just the fire alarm being weird again,” said Taylor Beach, 11.
Not only is it a safety issue, but hearing a loud noise that is supposed to be an emergency can also be distracting to many people. It causes the class to break apart from their routine which affects students’ ability to finish work.
“My only concerns are losing class time to finish work,” said Alani Rolin, 11.
This distraction not only affects students ability to focus but also makes it difficult for teachers to teach their lesson.
“It’s annoying because it breaks up the class and it’s harder to bring back students to work because it’s such a distraction. Yeah, that’s like the major issue,” said English teacher Andrew Kosel-Castaneda.
Most importantly this is a safety concern of many people on campus. The frequent false alarms without evacuation is teaching our campus bad habits for the day we have a real emergency when someone could get really hurt by this enormous problem.
“None of this is good practice, none of this is how it should be and the students are being trained to ignore the fire alarm. This is bad, and then this has to be in violation of several codes on how we are supposed to be running this campus. Our job is to keep you safe,” said McDonough.
On Friday, November 19, 2021 at 10:59 AM an email was sent to all staff about a faulty sensor for one of the alarms that was causing all the false alerts. It was advised to not evacuate if the fire alarms were continuing to get triggered falsely, unless announced to evacuate.
The frequent falsely-triggered fire alarms still send a message to the fire department, this potentially could cause problems for the actual emergencies they have to respond to.
“When the fire alarm goes off the fire department is called which means they start to respond to that alarm, you could be lying in the street bleeding to death and they’re not going to come to you because they think Pioneer High School has a fire,” said physics teacher Colleen McDonough.
Students share similar concerns as teachers regarding the frequency of the fire alarms.
“I’m concerned for when there is an actual emergency and we just ignore it because we think it’s just the fire alarm being weird again,” said Taylor Beach, 11.
Not only is it a safety issue, but hearing a loud noise that is supposed to be an emergency can also be distracting to many people. It causes the class to break apart from their routine which affects students’ ability to finish work.
“My only concerns are losing class time to finish work,” said Alani Rolin, 11.
This distraction not only affects students ability to focus but also makes it difficult for teachers to teach their lesson.
“It’s annoying because it breaks up the class and it’s harder to bring back students to work because it’s such a distraction. Yeah, that’s like the major issue,” said English teacher Andrew Kosel-Castaneda.
Most importantly this is a safety concern of many people on campus. The frequent false alarms without evacuation is teaching our campus bad habits for the day we have a real emergency when someone could get really hurt by this enormous problem.
“None of this is good practice, none of this is how it should be and the students are being trained to ignore the fire alarm. This is bad, and then this has to be in violation of several codes on how we are supposed to be running this campus. Our job is to keep you safe,” said McDonough.