Niles West held its first fire drill of the year on Friday, August 31, 2024. In past years, students and staff were assigned to a specific area surrounding the school based on the location of their classroom. This year, all classes were expected to report to the football field.

“Typically I work with Mr. Lopez, he’s our director of security, [and] he’s the one who usually plans our drills. For this particular year, we haven’t practiced this in a while. In the event that there actually is a true emergency in the building, we wouldn’t just evacuate across. You know how we go into the grass, we would need to be away from the building. In reality, we would have to evacuate to the football field which would then be obviously a great difference in between. If there’s an actual fire, a chemical spill or something we would have to get away from the building, that’s actually where we would go. Since we haven’t practiced that in a few years, we wanted to make sure our staff and students were familiar with the process,” assistant principal Steve Parnther said.

The fire drill was held during homeroom and cut into fourth period.

“I thought it was a bit unnecessary to do all this. In a real fire, it wouldn’t be very organized and it would be pretty chaotic,” sophomore Annie Huang said.

Each grade was assigned to a section of the football field. Seniors and juniors were stationed on the home bleachers, sophomores on the visitors bleachers and freshmen on the field. Once all students made it to the field, they were directed to go to their fourth period class.

“I think overall it was okay. It was a little confusing because there was congestion getting out there and not enough space for everyone to get into the different areas. Overall, everyone got out so that was good,” science teacher Meghan McGovern said.

Parnther agrees that the drill was a success.

“We time [the drill] and we were trying to be mindful of homeroom and the next period because we want to minimize how much instruction time is lost. Our goal was to get students out as quickly and safely as possible and then get students and staff quickly and safely back into the building so we’re minimizing how much time is lost into the next period. I think we did that. We have over 2500 students and a lot of staff so getting everybody out to the stadium and getting everyone back is a big task. I think we did a great job. Our security team did really great, our staff did great [and] I think our students did too. They moved with a sense of urgency and took it very seriously,” Parnther said.