legends · 4 min read ·
Evacuation Count
A fire warden's drill reports count more people at the assembly point each month, wearing office clothes from 1989.
**Corrington House — Fire Evacuation Drill Report. Fire Warden: T. Ndlovu (Floor 5).**
**Building occupancy at time of drill: 212 staff signed in. Assembly point: car park B.**
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**Drill 1 (Mon 9 Sept, 10:30).** Alarm sounded. Evacuation complete in 6 min 40 s. Assembly point roll-call: 212 present. All accounted for. Good.
**Drill 2 (Mon 14 Oct, 10:30).** Alarm sounded. Evacuation complete in 5 min 55 s. Roll-call: 213. One over. Sign-in sheet reconciled: 212 signed. A visitor must have slipped in. Noted.
**Drill 3 (Mon 11 Nov, 10:30).** Evacuation 6 min 10 s. Roll-call: 214. Two over. Visitors' book checked: nil.
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I am a warden because I am dutiful. That is the sole reason. I volunteered because nobody else on the floor wanted a hi-vis vest, a whistle and a clipboard, and the training was half a day with sandwiches. I'm good at it. I count. I have a clear voice and I do not lose my head.
At the third drill I took the clipboard down myself and did the roll-call in the car park by name. I went through the whole list, from the top, using the HR printout. Two hundred and twelve names. And at the end I asked, in a loud voice, "Is there anyone here whose name I have not called?"
Two people put their hands up.
They stood at the back. A man and a woman, middle-aged, in the sort of clothes that office workers wore in the nineties: his tie too wide, her blouse with a ruffled neck. They had lanyards. Not ours. Old paper badges in plastic sleeves, with the name of a firm I did not know. *Harcastle & Webb.*
"You're not on my list," I said.
"No," said the man. His voice was pleasant, a little puzzled. "We're from the old office. We just came out when the alarm went."
"What old office?"
"The one on this site," said the woman. "Before this building. Before the redevelopment. We were on the fifth floor. There was a fire."
I told myself they were temping. I told myself they were from the tenant downstairs. I told them to go through to reception and sign in. They nodded and walked away, and when I looked after them I saw that they went neither towards the doors nor the car park exit, but into the building through the wall, quite gently, between one pane and the next.
On the next drill there were five.
On the one after, nine.
I have pulled the records. Harcastle & Webb were a firm of accountants who occupied this site until 1989. A fire started in the stationery cupboard on the fifth floor on a Thursday in March. The alarms failed. Eleven staff were lost.
The firm was eleven staff.
They are coming back one at a time. Every drill, the alarm sounds, and one more comes out into the car park with us, blinking, in their old clothes, with their lanyards. They stand at the back. They don't speak much. They look relieved.
I have not told anyone. I can't see the harm. They are, in their way, extremely well-behaved. They do not take up space. They don't use the lifts. They hold their coats. I make a point of calling them in the roll-call, now, at the end, by the names on the badges. Each of them answers: "Here."
The last drill is the one I'm afraid of. There'll be eleven, and then there will be none left to come. That will be a quiet day. We'll count two hundred and twelve and eleven, and I will say, "All present and accounted for," and I'll watch them go back in.
Last week, the building manager said they were planning to switch the alarm system to a quiet, silent type. A flashing light. An app. "It's more efficient," he said. "The bells are a bit old-fashioned."
I said, "Please don't."
He asked why not, and I said, truthfully, that the bells were the only thing the staff on the fifth floor had ever heard. I said that if we took away the bell, they wouldn't know when to come out. They'd go on sitting at their desks in the smoke, with their files, in the rooms where it never stopped.
He gave me a funny look and said he'd think about it.