School Fire Drill Investigation

Would your child know what to do, if a fire started in their school? Would they know what to do, in the event of a tornado, or if an intruder breaks into their school?

These are questions that a NewsChannel 9 investigation has uncovered, may not have clear answers. Turns out, some of the drills that teach those skills, were not held this past school year. That conclusion comes, after our investigation examined dozens of fire and safety drill records of schools in our viewing area..

Tennessee's law is rather specific on the inspections of fire drill records.. it says, every school in Tennessee "will give one fire drill requiring full evacuation every month during the school year, with an additional fire drill to be conducted within the first 30 days of operation." A separate Chattanooga city ordinance, requires two fire drills per month..

Also, the law says, every school has to have three additional safety drills during the school year, which may include inclement weather, earthquake, intruder or other some other emergency drill.

Every school is required to keep a log of the fire drills that are done, and must present those for inspection if asked.

NewsChannel 9 requested all of the fire drill reports from the 10 counties in the NewsChannel 9 viewing area. That's 160 schools.

We wanted to see if all the schools were holding the required number of fire drills per month.

After pouring through all the records, we discovered some schools, most of them in Hamilton County , are not holding the number of fire drills that state law requires..

"I could see where a school could miss a month," says Hamilton County Deputy Administration Superintendent Rick Smith. "I'm concerned when they missed more than one month." Mr. Smith had not seen this information, before our NewsChannel 9 investigation requested it. He was surprised at what our investigation found.

6 schools apparently violated state law this past school year, according to the documents provided to us.

Brainerd High School held no required fire drills in November, January, April or May.. the school also held no required tornado, weather or intruder safety drills at all.

Chattanooga Middle School missed November and May's required fire drills.. that school also held no safety drills all year.

Tyner Academy held no required fire drills in December, January or May, and only did one safety drill.

Big Ridge Elementary did no fire drills in December, February, April and May, and only did one safety drill.

Tyner Middle School did the required first fire drill in August, then missed September and October.. did November's, then missed January.. that school did no more required fire drills the rest of the year. It also did not do any tornado, weather or intruder safety drills all year long.

Deputy Superintendent Smith says, he'll be meeting soon with all the county's principals about the findings, saying "it certainly will be something that I address with them.. in fact, it will be a non-negotiable with me."

He says he did not think any of the affected school students were in danger, but they did miss some good practice time. "It is serious," he says. "This is now time for us to implement or put into practice what we've been practicing. Yes, we'll address the failure to do fire and safety drills with all of our principals."

Mr. Smith says, with the usual turnover of principals in the school system, some NEW principals may not be aware of the state law that mandates fire and safety drills, but they will now be made aware of it.

As for the other counties in our viewing area, none of the reports we got, showed as many missed drills as the schools mentioned in Hamilton County.