...I assume are the same on the West Coast.
Today, as I was dropping off 'Shroom at preschool, a fire alarm sounded throughout the entire elementary school, including the attached preschool wing. Based on the relative "panic" level of the school administrators and teachers, I'm guessing that it wasn't a planned drill.
Kids, parents, teachers, and everyone else in the building were evacuated to the parking lot several hundred yards down. Sounds like a pretty routine thing, right? It should be. Except . . .
. . . in the case of a fire, all people are to evacuate the building without grabbing personal effects or appropriate outerwear. There were children ranging in age from toddlers (sibs of students?) to ten year olds and all school-aged children were outside without jackets.
'Shroom and Lolli (and myself) were lucky. We still had our jackets on and as we stood outside shivering. I still had 'Shroom's school bag which had his hat, mittens and snow pants. The other kids were shivering in the freezing cold (literally as temperatures were in the low 20's with 25 mph winds and based on the temps and winds, the windchill was at 3 degrees) without their jackets. If it weren't for 'Shroom wimpering for the cold, I would have loaned out his hat and mittens to the nearby kids.
Two young girls (maybe six or seven years old) in front of me were hugging each other to stay warm. All they were wearing were thin long-sleeved T-shirts and short skirts with tights. I was just about to unzip my 3-in-1 jacket (for those of you familiar with NE apparel, this is just as important as underwear) and give one girl my inner fleece and the other the outer jacket shell, when the children were allowed to re-enter the building. Even then, waiting for the masses to enter the building was slow and tedious.
Freeze or burn. That's a choice not too many Southern Californians have to make.
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