The Netherlands - Fire Drill

It's unfair to say that this kind of fire drill occurs in all part of the Netherlands, but at least it was like this in Wageningen University this year.

At 10:00 AM I was sitting comfortably in front of a public computer in Forum (the name of the building where the Student Services Center is), and my friend casually approached me to "ask for the time" (he was kidding; he just wanted to say hi). I turned to him, and then I suddenly saw this thick smoke covering the top 3 floors of the building. Then I asked him if it was smoke or fog, because today was rather cold and cloudy. We were wondering what had happened for quite some time until the fire alarm rang and there was an announcement for evacuation.

I obediently followed the instruction to evacuate the building because I thought it was real. I saw the smoke. I attempted to take a picture of the smoke from inside the building but one of the proctors caught me in action and hushed me out of the building. Just right outside the building, I could still see the smoke and I took a commemorative picture of it. It's kind of hard to see, but there was definitely smoke near those glass windows above.

The evacuation process was rather smooth. I wasn't panicking at all because I was only on the first floor when it happened and the smoke was far away from me. I was still wondering what was happening until another friend of mine told me that it was actually a fire drill. People who had been in the building longer than a year were aware of it; new students like me were not, naturally.

Still, it was the best fire drill ever. I had never been to a fire drill where they use real smoke to scare people out of the building and at the same time to simulate an actual fire occurrence.

The weather was not too friendly outside but at least it wasn't raining. We missed 1 hour of lecture (and nobody is really complaining about this). After about half an hour being outside (and goofing around the building), the drill was over and they finally let us in.

It was a fun (and exciting, in may ways) fire drill!