FIREDRILL

Fire drill

A fire drill is a method of practicing the evacuation of a building for a fire or other emergency. Generally, the emergency system sounds and the building is evacuated as though a real fire had occurred. Usually, the time it takes to evacuate is measured to ensure that it occurs within a reasonable length of time, and problems with the emergency system or evacuation procedures are identified to be remedied.

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fire drill

Noun

  1. An organised practice to prepare occupants of an office, school or other public building for evacuation in the event of a fire.
  2. any pointless, unproductive, useless, or chaotic activity (sometimes Chinese fire drill, but this usage is becoming outmoded in an age of political correctness)
    Since they changed the standards again, our previous efforts now just amount to a fire drill.
  3. any chaotic, unexpected activity. (With the dropping of Chinese the phrase has also often lost its pejorative meaning of pointless and unproductive. In this way, fire drill is often used in the same idiomatic way putting out fires or fire fighting is used.)
    Sorry I didn't get back to you earlier, I've been involved in a fire drill all afternoon.
  4. A rod which is rotated on a flat surface like a drill until it is hot enough to start a fire.


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: fire drill
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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