You can call me Fire Marshall Bill...

Today my company conducted an office wide fire drill. Normally I wouldn't think much of it, but for some reason they decided that I would make a good "fire warden". Each department has about two fire wardens, most of which consist of managers and supervisors. Actually, there were only two people in the meeting leading up to drill that weren't management. They were myself and the main receptionist.

The responsibilities of a fire warden are quite easy. Put on an orange vest and make sure there's nobody from your section left in the building. That's about it. But that started to get me thinking. Don't you think an office would be the last place that would need a fire drill? One would assume that it's a professional atmosphere where people know each other, so nobody would be running for the exits or pushing people out of the way (ala George Costanza). At the same time it's a fire...so people are going to get out in a timely fashion.

So I thought it some more. Then I started to think about the term "fire warden". Some people here already feel like they're in a prison, I'm sure the word "warden" is only going to confirm their feelings. But that led me to this question: Do prisons conduct fire drills? You would think they would be one of the places that would need fire drills the most.

On the one hand, if there was an actual fire, the prisoners would have to be released from their cells. On the other hand, you can't have prisoners fleeing the jail and wandering off God knows where. Depending on the situation, you could have a full scale riot going on because both prisoners and guards would be panicking. You can't have the prisoners burn to death, but you can't let them causing a ruckus. What do you do?

Here's what I would do. Make it the premise of the next prison break movie. A fire is started on the opposite side of the prison. Everybody is forced to evacuate. A prisoner(s) either find a way to escape right then and there, or they find a place to hide out inside the prison for a while, then wait for their time to escape.

Of course, that's a horrible idea and would never be made, but it's no worse than some of the stuff Hollywood has pumped out. I'm sure Rambo IV is going to be an Oscar winner!