Yardley Communications

At 11.45am on July 10th the fire alarms went off in the Yardley SDA Church. There was however no fire. The alarm was set off by church elder Greg Campbell. For several months it had been the plan and aim to run a fire drill in the church during church time.

The fire officer for the church, Chris Louth had pointed out that as the church was a public building this was something that we had to do and so he met with a local fire chief to find out more about how a fire drill would run and what we would have to do.

As a church we needed to know that should the misfortune of a fire take place, we could vacate the building in a quick and orderly fashion. The Church board set the date when the local pastor was preaching and we attempted to keep the date just between the designated fire marshals, deacons and elders. Ahead of time the church was notified that a fire drill would take place in the near future as well as the escapes pointed out and the route highlighted.
So on July 10th, during church service, right after the offering was taken, the alarms rang out.

The marshals quickly jumped into action directing the people out of three exits. In order to ‘pass’ as a safe fire drill we had to all exit the building within 2 minutes and this was achieved with all members out within 1minute 30 seconds. The fire marshals took another 15 seconds to make sure all rooms were empty and by 1 minute 45 seconds the whole building was vacated. As is usual in churches there was a range of ages in church that day from young to old, from able bodied to those who needed assistance to walk and all were safely evacuated.

All in all the whole operation took less than 10 minutes and the service continued when we all came back into church with the children’s story.

Commenting on the event church Pastor Adam Ramdin said “This is something that we hope would never happen in our church but, it was good to know that should a fire break out in church, right in the middle of the main service, that we can safely evacuate all 100+ persons who were there, within such a short time in a safe and orderly fashion."

Editor's Comment: All churches should carry out a fire drill at least once a year. It is good practice not to announce fire drills in advance so you get a realistic idea of how effective your fire evacuation plans are.
Everyone must participate in a fire drill and you should record the result of each fire drill in your fire log book.

All Church officers should be provided with instruction and training so that they know what to do in the event of a fire. Everyone must know:

• How to raise the alarm if they discover a fire
• How to contact the fire brigade
• How to use the fire-fighting equipment
• How and where to evacuate the building
• Where to assemble and who to report to