We got an email last week saying that today we will have a fire drill.  Here is part of the text.

We will have a fire drill on Monday which will be supervised by the Fire Department.  We don’t know the time, just come prepared to walk down 22+ flights of stairs.  Everyone needs to evacuate.  The company will be fined by the Fire Department finds people in the suite.

When we lived in the New York building in Chicago (3660 N Lake Shore), we were on the 32^nd floor.  There was one time when a fire alarm sounded and I had to walk all the way down.  You would think that since you’re going “downhill” that it wouldn’t be tiring, but when you have two flights of stairs for each floor, it is surprisingly exhausting.  An even bigger factor is getting dizzy from making 64 turns in the same direction on the way down.

When I worked on the 13^th floor in midtown (yes, they actually called it the 13^th, not the 14^th floor) it wasn’t a bad walk down the stairs, assuming you were in decent shape.  I’m not a fan of the bottlenecking that occurs as you get to the lower sets of floors as more and more people crowd into the stairways.  While not claustrophobic, I don’t like having to stop while walking down flights of stairs.  My mind begins to wander with too many scenarios like the one below.

I still think about 9-11 when walking down the stairs.  As you’re walking down sets of stairs within enclosed, concrete hallways, my mind always drifts to what those World Trade Center victims were thinking at the time.  I can’t begin to imagine the horror as they became trapped in a windowless corridor as the building started to collapse and the deafening roar of 80 floors that would pulverize them in less than a second.  That image always is in my head now as I walk down those stairs in any fire drill I’m in.