Quote Originally Posted by puretexn View Post
WTF? Fire drills are to get out of the burning building you are IN. Usually it's get out of the building and rally in the parking lot. The last place you want to be when a refinery is on fire is out in the open with a potential highly toxic atmosphere floating around. Plus you don't want to be in the open when explosions are going on. What goes up, must come down.

"Shelter in Place" would have been the way to go until the proper authorities arrived to assist in a safe evacuation.

Just my .02, I was not there, so I don't know the details, but this type of situation is my job.

Great to see it was not catastrophic.
Yeah, probably not the best choice without knowing exactly what the situation was outside. Hard to tell the timing of events from that part of the article, but it sounds like they lined up the students after the explosion. This could have been simply to move them to a central location. Then the power went out, probably from CPS cutting the power to the area as a safety precaution for the fire crews. From what I saw on the news last night, they soon loaded all the kids on buses and moved to a safe location outside the evacuation zone. So they weren't exactly kept standing outside there. Supposedly some people from the nearby apartments even came out and stopped traffic to allow for the buses to get out of the parking lot.