This is a test of the emergency evacuation plan. This is only a test.

During my time in the Hempfield School District we had a fire drill once a month, tornado drills twice a year, and a yearly intruder drill. I imagine the goal was to have all students be prepared for whatever emergency might face us. The one time we did have an actual emergency (a tornado in kindergarten) everyone remained safe the entire time thanks to the hours the district had spent teaching us what to do.

Naturally schools in Hunan want their students to remain safe during an emergency as well. They have, however, adopted a very different system to ensure the students know what to do in the event of a fire or earthquake, like the one that shook Sichuan Province just over one year ago.

The drill at Jingyan Middle School stated with a 45 minute lecture given by some type of school authority and a military official. All 1000 junior 1 students brought their chairs into the “playground” (ie: basketball courts between the academic buildings) to listen to the talk, while the other students “listened” over the loud speaker. At some point during the lecture I heard the soldier say weiguoren several times in quick succession. Meaning foreigner, weiguoren is one of a handful of Chinese words that almost always catches my ear. I asked one of my Chinese friends if he was talking about “my people” and she said that he was telling the students that foreigners know how to deal with emergencies better than Chinese people and that the Chinese should learn from them. As one of the resident foreign experts at Jingyan, perhaps they could have asked if I had anything to add. They didn’t and I would have.

Following the lecture two students were selected from the group to come over to a burning trash wheel-barrel. The school leaders had lit a small fire in the barrel and it was the students’ job to put the fire out with fire extinguishers. After a quick fire extinguisher lesson, the students were let loose on the fire, which they put out with ease.



Next the military representatives brought a gas tank to the stage area and proceeded to set it on fire. A soldier was successful at extinguishing the tank with a wet blanket after about five tries, several of which almost burnt him. Naturally, at this point a student was called up to give it a shot. The student happened to be one of the most outspoken students in class 5, named America. Thankfully, America was far better at putting the fire out than the “expert” and walked away from the demonstration unharmed.



All the students then went back to their classrooms to prepare for the drill portion of the day. A school official somehow produced fake smoke, that I doubt anyone except me actually saw, which signaled the beginning of the drill. A voice came over the loud speaker telling the students to begin coming out of the buildings. Teachers were stationed a different points along the way, yelling at the students to run. And run they did. The students bent low and covered their faces while they ran from the buildings as quickly as possible. They reported to their morning exercise positions in the playground. Many feigned joy at safely escaping the burning building while they waited to be told they could go home for the day. It took only a little over five minutes for all the students and staff to get out of the buildings. Pretty good for over 3,000 people.

I’m not actually sure how prepared the students are. In the case of an actual emergency I imagine several students would be trampled by a stamped of their frightened classmates, while others are injured by burning or flying debris falling from the buildings only feet from where they’re standing. Whatever its faults, I believe the students are better off for having practiced rushing out of the buildings than had the school never run the drill.

Back at Hempfield, students are likely still “quickly walking” out of the buildings during their monthly drills, entirely ignorant of how to put out a burning gas tank. While I have my opinions on who is more prepared for an emergency, I’ll keep them to myself and let you decide on your own.