By Juan Calvillo and Mayra Salazar
Long Beach State will hold its annual campus-wide building evacuation drill on Friday, Feb. 21, at 10:30 a.m.
In an email sent to the campus community on behalf of the University Police Department on Feb. 3, the university announced its annual campus-wide building evacuation drill.
Everyone is required to leave campus buildings until about 10:50 a.m. when all alarms have been turned off.
An “All Clear” message will be sent to conclude the drill.
The purpose of the annual spring evacuation drill is to test how quickly the UPD can clear campus buildings and to test the BeachALERT emergency notification and physical fire alarm systems.
The evacuation drill is a requirement that UPD must complete at least one time per year.
The evacuation drill starts when the fire alarm systems are manually activated in conjunction with issuing a BeachALERT to the entire campus community.
The BeachALERT emergency alert system is tested each semester.
People inside campus buildings must exit and go to the designated Evacuation Assembly Areas outside until the drill ends.
“The location of an assembly area does not dictate which exit occupants should take when evacuating,” John Brockie, UPD chief of police, said. “In an emergency, occupants should take the nearest safe exit available and then go to the assembly area once outside to check in with their supervisor or professor, if applicable.”
The UPD has teams throughout campus that report on evacuation times, alarm system status or any issues encountered.
The evacuation drill will proceed as it always has, with the exception of 2021 and 2022, when it was combined with an earthquake drill.
“It can be tricky to have people react realistically when they know it is only a drill, meaning they won’t evacuate as quickly as they would in a real emergency, so the data we get during drills may not always reflect a real-world response,” Allyson Joy, emergency manager for the UPD, said.
The use of audible fire alarms, visible strobes and flashing lights in the evacuation drill is to test out the systems so that both visual and audible alerts are fully operational and can indicate an emergency.
Beach Building Services deploys a tram of fire alarm specialists throughout campus during the drill to ensure the fire alarm systems are working properly and to address any technical issues that arise.
BBS will also run fire alarm testing on individual buildings on a rotating basis to ensure full operationality.
Joy said that it’s important for people to take every opportunity they can to practice their emergency response.
“By practicing evacuating a building they potentially spend a lot of time in, they are establishing what we call ‘muscle memory’ so that even in a high-stress emergency situation, they will be quicker to take action if they have already practiced it before,” she said.
