alarm
"I can't remember exactly how many fire alarm tests we had done in the past. What I know is that no one, including me, took them even remotely seriously. We all quietly packed our things, put on our jackets, Bringing out breakfast and looking for friends. So it happened that when there was a real alarm, nobody had the faintest idea what to do. Nobody listens to the teachers anyway.
It was a Thursday on which the high-pitched, almost deafening bells woke my class from the half-sleep of history class. It took all of us a moment to realize that this sound wasn't the break gong, then everyone started talking wildly, which I was debating with my buddy forgot. Our teacher tried to call us to order, announcing that he had not been notified of a test alarm.
Our class representative opened a window and peered out to see if she could see fire or smoke. The answer could only be read from her pale complexion. The hustle and bustle, which had subsided for a short time, burned up again even more violently, every scream a bit confused, no one knew where to go.
Something similar seemed to be going on in the other rooms, the rumbling and shouting urge through the closed doors.
Only then did the fire alarm announce itself. "This is not an exercise! Fire alarm! Please go outside! This is not an exercise!" The endless loop of these sentences echoed in my head and did not allow me to think clearly.
So I missed who had noticed that the smoke was very close to our classroom in the Eastern Bloc.
Suddenly everyone tried to squeeze through the door without paying attention to the others, the three of them were stuck in the door frame, but they pushed on from behind. I looked on from behind, had better plans than being crushed in this grape. To my surprise, nobody thought of taking their things with them because they were afraid of taking their things with them, I really didn't expect that.
After two minutes that had seemed like an eternity to me, the crowd in the door broke away, and my classmates and I streamed out into the hallway like in a wash basin in which the stopper had been loosened. My last look into the classroom was at the window, I thought I remembered it should be closed.
It was no less crowded in the corridor, here too it was sometimes only going at a snail's pace, while some of them were punching their way through while running. Again, it took a while before you could move again. The air grew noticeably warmer. The plan of the students and teachers of the Eastern Bloc was that they wanted to take the long corridor to the Western Block and from there to the school yard, as the teachers suspected that the main entrance, which is close to the Eastern Bloc, could become a trap.
We were a big school. The two halves, divided into east and west, held a thousand students each.
The announcement still boomed from the loudspeakers, which were also hanging in the hallway, along with the fire alarm.Someone shouted that it was good now, others agreed. I remember exactly that this repetition also cost me the last nerve.
It was creeping forward, it seemed to me like an endless line in front of the popcorn stand in the cinema, although at that moment I found the comparison more than inappropriate. In retrospect, I wasn't all that wrong.
At some point, I can't decide on a time, during these moments I lost all understanding of time, a girl screamed. I didn't know her, I didn't have a course with her.
Totally panicked, wide-eyed, she gestured in the direction behind us. We all turned, a lot of black smoke had built up behind the fire door, and the frame cracked and creaked frighteningly. Now that she had pointed this out to us, we heard the noises very clearly.
Again the crowd started jostling and I did my best to get to the edge to hold on, otherwise I would have been overrun.
Why I was able to wait so calmly, despite my fear, until everyone was past me is still not clear to me, but it was true.
I looked down the hall, it was almost extinct. There was a body not far from me. He was still young but didn't belong to any student, I recognized the trainee teacher from my math class.
My instinct for self-preservation tried to persuade me to use the free route to save myself. On the other hand, said another part of me, of course I would want to be saved too. After a quick squint at the door, she hurried over to her and shook her shoulder. She didn't react, her shoulder-length hair hung tangled in her pale face. Her open eyes weren't looking at me, her pupils were rolled up so that only the white could be seen.
She was dead, I don't know why, I wouldn't have time to find out either, the fire protection door could no longer withstand the pressure and exploded.
Then my body went on its own and rushed outside through the hot broken glass.
I made it, but I will probably never forget the woman's lifeless face, only a few years older than me. "
Excerpt from the trauma diary of a surviving student.