Fire alarms are an essential part of school, as a result, schools always like to have planned times to do fire alarm drills for preparation and practice, usually around every month and a half. However, what happens when someone pulls a fire alarm? Especially, when it’s pulled more than once. Well Holyoke High school students and administration witnessed what would happen plus how serious this really was on October 7th.
Recently, Holyoke High School North went through four different fire alarms, resulting in the punishment of a student. At first two fire alarms went off due to a malfunction in them near the gymnasium, the malfunction ended up being fixed. On the contrary, the next two fire alarms weren’t thanks to the malfunction.A student pulled two fire alarms, the student ended up getting arrested as a result.
Holyoke High’s Principal, Lori McKenna spoke about how it both causes a disturbance to the students who go to school to learn and get taught, but more importantly gives a huge disturbance to the emergency services such as the fire department and police department due to the fact that this hurts them more because they’re dealing with false alarms instead of preparing for a actual disaster to happen.
Fire alarms keep getting in the way of many important things such as academic learning for youth and the more fire alarms that occur, the less time students get to learn, and sometimes even eat lunch, a necessary part of their day. It can fluctuate the amount they learn and could make the students under-prepared for tests or important assignments at times.
Pulling fire alarms is sadly not a new thing the school has dealt with. The 23rd of October for example, the school also witnessed a fire alarm at their last block of the day. This fire alarm was also not a malfunction but due to someone that pulled it.
It’s not worth getting in trouble for doing something “stupid” such as pulling fire alarms. Fire alarms are made for emergency purposes and shouldn’t be used as a tool to get out of school. Persistent usage of these fire alarms for the uses not intended can potentially lead to bad situations happening such as forest fires, places burning down, or death.
In essence, fire alarms have consistently been used as a tool to get out of school, something that should be stopped and enforced before worse possibilities happen at the hands of the students. No one wants to really deal with fire alarms everyday, and if it keeps happening, consequences might be given. So please, be safe and make sure you’re not pulling fire alarms.
