It is easy to roll your eyes at another fire drill. The alarm goes off, you file outside, you stand around, you go back in. What is the point?
Ask the 2,700 employees of Morgan Stanley who walked out of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
Rick Rescorla, the company's security director, had studied the building's vulnerabilities after the 1993 bombing and concluded that another attack was likely. Starting in 1997, he ran mandatory evacuation drills every quarter. Employees practiced descending the stairwells two by two, leaving room for first responders, and gathering at designated meeting points. Some grumbled. Rescorla did not care.
On the morning of September 11, when the second plane hit the South Tower, Morgan Stanley's employees already knew exactly what to do. Nearly all 2,700 made it out alive. Only 13 did not, most of them people who stayed behind to help others, including Rescorla himself.
That is the purpose of every drill you have ever done. Emergency situations create confusion, noise, and panic. Training replaces panic with procedure. Research confirms this: the National Fire Protection Association reports that building occupants who have practiced evacuations move significantly faster and make fewer critical errors than those who have not.
The five minutes you spend on a drill could be the five minutes that save your life. Take them seriously.
