Fire drills in school are compulsory, especially in my school in UAE. But we students tend to get  irritated everytime there is a drill.

The drills are always chaotic, no matter what the management tries to do.

My classmates and I always scream out one thing when we hear the fire alarm, “Yes, a break from the boring class!”

We would be jumping with joy, if the alarm rings during a test.

We never seemed to understand the importance of these drills. Of course, we knew that we had to do what ever we were doing at that time in case of a real fire. But still, we took the fire drill as a leisure time, goofing around and elaborately enacting what we would do, if a fire should really break out

Now let me get to the actual story. On one normal school day, everyone was waiting for the school bell to ring. The bell rang. I boarded the bus and reached home at 2.20pm. As usual after freshening up, I logged on to Facebook.

My jaws dropped on reading the status updates of some of my friends.

It read, “The school is on fire!”

I quickly called up my friends and gathered the news.

Apparently, there was a short circuit and the AC gas leaked and that is how the fire started. The canteen and the multi purpose hall got completely burnt and trashed.

At first, when the fire alarm rang, everyone thought that it was a faulty wire or that some kid was trying to annoy the teachers by breaking the emergency fire alarm.

But then they realized that it was not a kid pranking on them when they saw the school coverd with  thick black smoke.

The police and the fire engine arrived. Despite  all the chaos around, they got everyone assembled in a safe place. It was easier because almost all the students had left for home, except around fifty of them who had stayed behind for special classes and a few teachers.

Fortunately no one got hurt. The causalities were 4 school bags. The boys felt sad for their Blackberries more than for their burnt books.

All of us who missed the scene were feeling bad because we had not seen how “awesome” it was. But we soon realized that there was nothing fun about it.

It sure was a lesson to us for not taking the fire drills seriously.

You can’t say that it completely changed us. But it did have an impact on us.

Written by: Rumaanah Ruqaiyah. UAE. (2012)

Photo Credit:Stuart Miles@freedigitalphotos.net

Photo Credit:bandrat@freedigitalphotos.net