SERIOUSLY SATIRICAL: Fire Alarm
March 25, 2015
The fire alarm at Diamond Bar High School is a brilliant innovation. For the past few weeks, it’s been going off constantly.
The number of times the fire alarm has gone off accidentally has made me see what these mishaps actually are. They aren’t strange occurrences whose appearances are never explained. but rather they’re underutilized resources whose false presence makes us more accustomed to danger.
The class time that whittles away? Instead of complaining, I rejoice! When I cover my ears, I’m merely appreciating the noise because I know that this is preparing me for an emergency.
There has been some concern that if the fire alarm rings in the face of a real emergency, no one at school would take it seriously. However, I don’t think that is necessarily the case.
When the alarm goes off, class is interrupted. Teachers go outside to ask other teachers about the situation. Students follow standard alarm protocol by covering their ears. Then, everybody waits for the official announcement that declares whether or not the alarm is real. Although there’s never an announcement at the start of an alarm to say that it’s just a mishap, when the announcement does come, it is appreciated because now students know what to do.
Once the announcement comes, the hysteria is over. We wait in anticipation. Because maybe, for the very first time, it’s an actual emergency. And then we hear the fateful words: “False alarm.”
How the school waits on those words—never before had I realized how efficient the fire alarm system is at DBHS.
So if an actual emergency occurs, our school will take it seriously. I can already imagine the situation.
When a fire occurs at school, and the fire alarm rings (once more), the usual will happen. Students will cover their ears and their teacher will check if the drill is real. If the fire is located at the foreign language building and this is the math building? No worries.
Once the official announcement comes on to alert students and staff, we will all be called to action. It doesn’t matter if students and teachers don’t get out of the classrooms right away and follow standard fire drill procedures, because they’re actually prepared. After all, they’ve heard the fire alarm plenty.
