FORT KENT – Despite some communications and technical glitches, last week’s districtwide evacuation drill in SAD 27 is being hailed as a learning experience by school and emergency response officials.

“I had told the principals last spring I would be calling a drill at some point,” Superintendent Sandra Bernstein said at Saturday’s board of directors meeting. “In fact, I decided to do it last week when all the principals were in my office for an administrative meeting.”

The idea, Bernstein said, was to determine how staff at the district’s four elementary schools and the high school would respond to an emergency situation in the absence of their administrators.

As it turned out, the staff and students were not the only ones caught by surprise last Tuesday.

When Bernstein called the secretary at Fort Kent Community High School to order the immediate evacuation, a simultaneous alarm was sounded at the local police station, where, as far as they knew, there was a real emergency at the high school.

“The biggest glitch in the whole procedure was letting them know [at the police and fire stations] this was a drill,” Bernstein said. “The person [at the high school] responsible for calling the police station and saying it was a drill was not in the building at the time.”

The high school, Bernstein said, is the only one of the district’s five school buildings with an alarm tied directly to the police station.

Meanwhile, at the police station, Police Chief Kenneth Michaud on Sunday said the alarm on the wall “started going wacky.”

Not willing to take a chance, Michaud immediately dispatched the alarm to the Fort Kent Fire Department, which sent to the high school four trucks with 12 members of its volunteer fire department.

“While they were on their way to the high school, I heard someone come on the radio and ask, ‘Where are we going, the high school or elementary school? [Because] the elementary kids are all out of the building,'” Michaud said. “As of then, I did not know what was going on.”

Michaud tried telephoning the high school, but there was no answer. “I figured right then it was a real fire,” he said.

It was a scene repeated from Eagle Lake to St. Francis as more than 1,000 elementary, middle and high school students were evacuated from their schools. And the only one who knew why was Bernstein.

“We have been working on a crisis response plan in SAD 27 since last year,” the superintendent said. “We have been doing some announced drills [but] I felt it was important to check the system.”

The drill was aimed at evacuating students 500 feet from their schools. She chose to do it when the principals were in her office to put the system to a real test.

“Typically the principals are the ones to manage an evacuation,” Bernstein said. “They have all been working on backup plans, and I wanted to make sure they would operate safely and efficiently without the principals there.”

Generally speaking, she said, the plans worked. “We did identify some areas to take care of,” she said.

In one school, the secretary had been identified as the principal’s backup, but she was also out of the building when the drill was called. In other buildings, the staff charged with checking to make sure all students were evacuated was not in place.

While Bernstein hopes she never has to empty the buildings for a real crisis – such as a threat of a bomb or chemical leak – she is glad to know a plan for evacuation is in place.

“The biggest problem was definitely the Fort Kent high school’s alarm,” Bernstein said. “When it is a drill, someone is supposed to call the police and fire, and that did not happen.”

Throughout it all, Bernstein said, there was no panic and staff and teachers handled the situation laudably, including those in Fort Kent where, she said, the elementary pupils normally would evacuate to the high school.

“With the high school evacuating, too, they had to regroup,” she said.

The drill, coming on Election Day, did cause a bit of a stir in Eagle Lake, where students were evacuated to the town office.

“The Eagle Lake officials were wondering who these small people coming to vote were,” Bernstein said.

“To me, it’s good we did not know it was a drill,” Michaud said. “We know our fire department can respond fast, and it’s good to see them do that.”

Don Madore, Fort Kent Volunteer Fire Department chief, agreed.

“It was a good experience,” Madore said. “The schools have several fire drills a year, and sometimes we are called in.”

Madore did say he has met with Bernstein since the drills to discuss areas of common concern. “There were no real problems,” he said.