How to Plan a School Evacuation Drill

A school evacuation typically occurs when staff and students need to leave the building either for a drill or because of a crisis situation. In a standard fire drill, an outside evacuation may last only a few minutes, and a true emergency can require moving to a further location for a longer period of time.

Difficulty:

Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Transportation
• Site maps of exits
• Assigned evacuation roles
• Evacuation plan
• Backup buildings

1. Write out the details of the evacuation drill and give a copy to each employee of the school. The plan should include the type of alarm that students and staff can expect, what these alarms mean and where particular classrooms should exit the building in case of a drill. Exits should be determined by proximity and accessibility and accommodations should be made for disabled persons.

2. Communicate details of the plan for evacuation to the staff. Each member should know the exact time of your drill for the first test. For subsequent tests, only the day should be divulged to test preparedness.

3. Incorporate specific details into your drill. Fire drills should have procedures for closing doors to contain smoke. Bomb threat drills should focus on non-electronic communication as these devices can trigger certain bomb mechanisms. Learn more about this in the "Practical Information on Crisis Planning" brochure at the U.S. Department of Education website (see Resources below).

4. Collect your personnel and student counts for the drill. Know the number of people you are evacuating and how many exits the school contains. It is important to account for each person during an evacuation (including visitors) and that everyone is removed from the location safely.

5. Define specific evacuation roles for staff. Assign a person to monitor each section of the building and others to conduct a head count once outside.

6. Prepare to accommodate special needs students and personnel by dedicating at least twice the amount of special needs staff to help evacuate this group. Use janitorial personnel and/or teachers aides where needed.

7. Coordinate with transportation services to bring staff and students to an alternate location in case of a real emergency. This could be a local church, another school or a local gymnasium.

Tips & Warnings

• Sometimes an incident occurs while students are outside the school building. A "reverse evacuation" procedure should be incorporated into your evacuation drill plan for these instances.