Day 448: No Fires, Please

Lately we've been running through some fire safety drills at school. Building safety in Korea certainly leaves something to be desired, just in the fact that most buildings don't even have smoke alarms or sprinklers. Exits are often few and far between, and escape stairwells are notoriously known as being more often used for storage. Not very safe at all if there ever was a fire!

Now POLY's up on the 5th floor of an office building, and I've often wondered what the hell we'd do in the event of a fire. 130 kids in the morning, plus staff, and only two stairwells out. Sounds kinda scary... Well at least we're doing the drills... We had a meeting and went over scenarios, and mapped out which classes would exit from which exits. All the kindergartens go out the front, but they have another challenge to deal with besides, you know, burning walls, clouds of toxic smoke, and collapsing ceilings and all. Apparently, in between the front entrance and the elevators, hidden up in the ceiling, is a massive steel door that in the event of a fire automatically lowers down to the floor, effectively sealing off the school (ie: supposedly preventing the spread of fire.) Now the prospect of fire and trying to escape safely with your class is frightening enough, but imagine trying to do it before this giant wall comes down. Very Indiana Jones like! Supposedly there's a small door in this wall that you can use so people trapped behind can still escape, but it all sounds rather shady to me.

I just hope to god that we never have a fire and have to find out!