fire meeting run by a monkey

Now for the stupid man of the week. I present Scuba Steve, or as he shall now be known Erkel. Erkel is a sort of safety person for one of the big companies here on site. All I can tell you about him is that he has got to be one of the most clueless guys around. He has this habit of setting off the fire alarms at the weirdest time. Kirk was ready to kill him a few months ago because in one weeks time, the fire alarm had gone off 5 times between the hours of 1-3pm. Kirk was on night shift at the time, so it was like being woken up 5 times at 1am for a normal shift worker. It always seems that when he is on site, the fire alarm always goes.

So tonight we had a meeting about fire evacuation procedures because we had a fire alarm yesterday at 6 am (which none of us were happy about) and only a few people showed up. Guess we all knew Erkel was on site so it was going to be a false alarm and no sense getting out of bed. There were some issues that needed to be addressed that he was really not equipped to answer or deal with.

For instance, we don’t have one set muster station to go to in the event of a fire. We had one when the camp first opened months ago but that idea went flat quite quickly. Mainly because it was Erkel’s plan that everyone go out to a work shop area (where we have to put on Personal Protection Equipment, which not everyone has) and wait in the cold until a bus arrives that will drive us to an old camp about 10 minutes away. Then, when the all clear is done, we get back on the bus and drive back to the main camp where we can go about our business. This was Erkel’s idea, just so you know he wasn’t always a rocket scientist that just turned stupid, that went flat. So now we have a different meeting point for every single place in the whole camp. If you are in your room you meet at the end of the hallway; if you are in the dining room/kitchen you meet on the back loading dock; if you are in the offices you meet in the dry change room, and so forth. There are attendance sheets at certain locations around the camp and in the event of the fire alarm the sheets are to be taken to these areas and roll call is to be done to make sure that all the people are accounted for. However, with there being so many different stations, roll call is sort of useless since we don’t know if the person is in their room, the kitchen, the office, the rec room or any of the other 14 locations around camp. It was brought up that this was to be solved by the senior person of the wing to get the master list and communicate with the other senior persons to do a radio like check list to make sure all people are accounted for. The problem that one person at the meeting found out is that not everyone has radios at the stations. The conversation to sort of come to a conclusion of this problem went something like this:

Person (P): how do we know where people are going to be in the event of a fire alarm? They could be in the gym, in the rec room, in the dining room if they are not in their room.
Erkel (E): in that case the senior person will communicate with the other senior persons in the muster points to confirm the person is there.
(P): but not everyone has a radio, so how do we talk to them?
(E): the senior person will establish communication
(P): but, we don’t have a radio...how do we establish this communication?
(E): the senior person will establish the communication and then do a roll call to see where the people are.
(P): but we don’t have radios.
(E): That is easily solved because the senior person will establish the communication.
(P *in frustration gives up this line of attack and decides on another flow*): Ok, so if there are no senior people at the point, what do we do?
(E): There is always a senior person.
(P): ok, who are these senior people?
(E): The person who is senior will be the senior person.
(P): so there are no set senior people?
(E): It will be decided in each point who will be the senior person and they will establish communication with the other senior people to do a roll call on who is at which point.

P, at this point, realizes that they are slowing being a part of an Abbot and Costello “who’s on first?” routine and nods at Erkel and stops this line of questioning. In the end, we still have no clue as to who is going to call who at what station to find out if the alarm was false or about roll call.

There was a question asked about when do we leave the muster points and return to our life. It was decided that we could leave when the senior person got a call saying it was a false alarm and we could return to our lives. Luckily, the above conversation was not replayed but it was assumed that Erkel was an idiot. We mentioned that no senior person came to the muster point in B wing and we were all left standing there at 6am not knowing what to do. Erkel assured us that a senior person was there and we must have been mistaken. No matter what was said to him, he would not believe that a muster point existed on site that a senior person did not go to and inform everyone that it was a false alarm and we could all go back to sleep.

In the end it was decided that we have no idea who the senior people are that will be at each muster point, there is no clue as to who is going to have a radio to radio for news on the fire alarm and it will be hit or miss on whether or not a senior person will come by the muster points to confirm that it was a false alarm or in the case of a real fire what we are to do. All we know is that our fire safety guy really has no clue as to what the heck is going on around him.

Also, his way of ending the meeting is to walk out of the door without saying another word. All I remember was him going through another “who’s on first” type of routine with another person about something I really didn’t care to listen to and I looked over to talk to a co-worker for 2 seconds and when I looked back he was gone and people were all looking around like we were an audience at a magic show and we just saw the magician vanish in thin air and we are not sure if we are to applaud and leave or wait for him to rematerialize. In the end, it was a total and complete waste of time on our part.

So he has my vote for being the most brain dead and useless person in the position that they have been hired for.