At 10:35 a.m., a previously unannounced fire alarm prompted everyone in Ekstrom Hall to vacate the building. Members of the Waterbury Fire Department and the College’s BEAR (Building Evacuation And Response) Team assisted students, faculty, staff and visitors in evacuating the building. They then conducted a sweep of each floor to ensure that everyone had made it out. Meanwhile, NVCC’s Critical Incident Management Team was monitoring the evacuation’s progress.

“You can never over plan,” said Lt. Toni Rinaldi, Director of Public Safety at NVCC. “In the environment that we live in today, regardless of whether it’s an evacuation for a fire or sheltering in place for an active shooter, you really need to plan ahead—and that starts with thinking about it, talking about it and then practicing it.”

From the first alarm to the all-clear signal, the drill lasted 22 minutes. “It went really well,” said Adam Rinko, administrative officer with the Waterbury Fire Department. Ninety-five percent of students had already evacuated when firefighters arrived on campus. “From what we saw, they were very cooperative,” he said.

Given the realities of current events, Rinko says emergency evacuation and preparedness drills help to make people more aware of their surroundings and serve as a reminder about the steps to take in the event of a real emergency. “You can’t learn if you’re not in a safe environment and this is part of creating a safe environment in 2015.”