MetaChat - Missouri Statewide Severe Weather Drill notes

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11 March 2008

Missouri Statewide Severe Weather Drill notes What my workplace (a public university) learned in the statewide weather drill today:→[More:]

1) When the "Tornado Watch" button on the Simplex alarm system gets pushed instead of "Tornado Warning" button, people do, not surprisingly, what they are instructed to do -- wait and watch for worsening weather. They do NOT move toward the exits. Why should they? It's a tornado watch, not a warning. Someone pushed the wrong button.

2) After 20 minutes, people ignore anything being droned through a loudspeaker.

3) The same people who pushed the wrong button don't know how to turn the repeating watch announcement off.

post by: lleachie at: 14:28 | 7 comments

Hope me, mods -- I forgot a "more inside" tag!

posted by lleachie 11 March | 14:29

They have you exit for tornado watches? Are they having you literally exit to go outside, or are they shuffling you to some central, window-less location?

posted by dismas 11 March | 14:51

After 4 years of being shoved in a room with 700 other people and too many filing cabinets during these drills, I managed to take a walk about five minutes before these things, only to return - surprisingly! - about five minutes after the drill wrapped up.

It was a nice break on those days!

posted by Sil 11 March | 14:58

We continued our class(@ MU), after someone explained that it was a statewide test.
I was pretty stoked as i had just gotten my test back and got a 97%!

posted by Schyler523 11 March | 15:56

When I was touring, we were at a college that had a tornado drill scheduled during our show. Thank goodness they warned us about it. We had a blast being panicked and rushing about Shakespearianly. Ish. And one of the shelter spots was gotten to by coming up over the stage. They did good. I think this was North Carolina or South Carolina - probably most students never experienced more than a drill.

And yay Schyler523 on the test!

posted by rainbaby 11 March | 16:15

Schyler -- good job! You're at Mizzou, eh? I'm at that smaller football-winning university in the northwest corner...:)

And exiting means "going to first floor and milling about in the hallway" in this case. We are expected to do this -- no sitting in classes and ignoring it.

posted by lleachie 11 March | 16:28

I'm pretty excited because so far this semester, I'm getting straight A's (without ritalin!)

I have two more exams today...I'm fairly confident about the material.

posted by Schyler523 12 March | 09:05

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