School Fire Drills In the 70s and 80s – Full Story Behind Them

When we were in school, all grades of school, Fire Drills were a common practice. Those red domed bells would ring loud and clear and we were told to calmly, yet quickly, go outside single file and stand in a line away from the school building. Those bells, back in the day, were startling. And in those narrow halls, echoed them, making them completely deafening.

Depending on what class we were in, would determine which doors we would exit. Sometimes we stood at the flagpole, other times the parking lot, and in elementary school, it was always the playground.

I recall the rebel kids pulling the alarms in order to get out of class. But when I was a kid, it was easy to set off the alarm. It was just the pull of a handle or taking a unlocked plastic cover off a red button and wham!

I’m not going to lie, I actually pulled a false alarm once so I could skip out of class as well.  It was Senior year and it was a dare, which I proudly accepted. If I hadn’t done it right before the summer recess and had already been accepted into college, I would have been in BIG trouble. Detention would have been the nominal punishment. And suspension could have been the worser punishment.

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