The fire drill

“loud noise"

One long ringtone. Fire alarm. Don’t worry, it is a drill. About every week, we have some kind of safety drill.

It can be MOB (man overboard), fire drill, evacuation of the ship and so on. Today it was a fire drill that then led to an evacuation of the ship. I was laying in my bed when the alarm went off. For a second or two I thought about staying in bed, maybe we can practice smoke diving? I jumped out of bed and stept into the hall. Apparently the main entrance was closed and the emergency exit had to be used. We have rollcall on the main deck. Our teacher starts by screaming eleven - then we scream out our designated ship number. Number eighteen is missing - where is she? Someone gets sent to search.

- Did you take our laundry?

- No, didn’t you?

- I did

Quiet conversations in the group. Okay, number eighteen is here. Everyone is here.

- Listen up, we have to prepare to abandon the ship.Some of us form a chain to get the survival suits down. Sometimes we practice with life jackets, sometimes with suits. We gather in our lifeboat groups - I'm in lifeboat group two, together with three other cabins, one watch leader and our chef. Someone volunteers to demonstrate how to put on the suit. We laugh at him when he struggles to get the suit on. He looks like a very clumsy lobster. Our teacher takes a picture that gets uploaded on Instagram. Then we wait for the captain to say the drill is over. Our lifeboat-group tries to decide which song is the best to sing when we jump in the lifeboat. Staying alive or I will survive? Then the drill is over. Everyone goes back to what they were doing. Someone was sleeping, another one reading. Someone is on watch and does maintenance work with Antony. Everything was put on hold for just a half hour. A half hour of information that could save us one day or hopefully never be used.

Lotten Malcus Martner