The school held a code red drill today, March 20, and inadvertently also held a fire alarm drill.

For the code red, students barricaded the doors of their third-period classrooms prior to class and waited as the alarm rang during the simulation. The fire alarm, on the other hand, occurred about 10 minutes into 4th period.

“We planned for a code red drill today,” Assistant Principal Galen Rosenberg said. “We plan for one every year. The [fire alarm] was not planned. [It] occurred because, at least as I understand it, one of the contractors set off the alarm.”

The fire alarm surprised Rosenberg and the rest of administration, who had just finished conducting a code red drill.

“That was just, ‘Oh my god, the alarm’s going off, we’re going to have to evacuate everyone,’” Rosenberg said.

Rosenberg feels that the code red drill and the useful, albeit unexpected, fire alarm drill are important as they help keep students and staff aware of potential emergencies.

“It helps the students and staff, for people to know how to behave and what the expectations are,” Rosenberg said. “Having to plan an emergency definitely helps more people these days and, even though our purpose here is training students and staff to know what to do during emergencies, I think the time that we spend here can also help students prepare for other emergencies … about the sorts of things they should be prepared for.”

Rosenberg feels that doing these drills with some level of regularity helps maintain student and staff understanding of emergencies.

“I think it’s important a couple times a year for us to prepare for emergency drills,” Rosenberg said.