Fire drill schedule

37 of 51 state drill rules verified

A 12-month drill schedule that varies the time on every shift — the part surveyors cite.

Leave this blank to use the rule we hold for your state. Fill it in if your state isn’t listed, or if your district or AHJ requires more than the state floor — the schedule is built around your number and says it came from you.
Printed on your sheet. On this device · Private.
Your shifts

Two-shift and 24-hour operations both work. Edit the times to match your rota.

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Pick your state and the schedule appears here.

Running the drills is not the hard part

Almost every facility runs its fire drills. The deficiency that gets written up is usually not a missing drill — it is a pattern in the ones that happened. Twelve drills, all on day shift. Four drills, every one of them at ten in the morning. The record is complete and it proves the night staff have never evacuated the building.

That is because the rule in most states is not simply a number. It is a number on each shift, at varying times, and the second half is the half that is easy to fail while feeling finished. So this schedule is built around the constraint rather than the count: no two consecutive drills on the same shift fall within an hour of each other, and every row tells you which rule its time is satisfying.

Why a window rather than a time

Each row gives an hour — “between 02:10 and 03:10” — instead of a single minute. A schedule that says 02:14 will be filed, ignored, and then contradicted by the log, because nobody starts a drill at the minute a spreadsheet chose. The window is the honest instruction: run it somewhere in here, then write down the time it actually started.

Where the numbers come from, and where they stop

The frequency is your state’s own, cited, with the date we last read the source — the same research behind the fire drill log and the emergency plan builder. Where a state has not been verified, the schedule says so on its face and falls back to the national baseline rather than printing a figure nobody checked. Where a state works its frequency out from the building itself — Florida is the clearest case — this tool refuses to produce a number at all and sends you to that state’s own questions instead.

Then log them

A schedule is a plan. What a surveyor asks for is the record. Every row here links straight into the fire drill log with the date and shift already carried across, and the compliance calendar holds drills alongside every other recurring test.

This produces a drill schedule. It does not certify compliance, and no schedule can: your authority having jurisdiction and your licensing agency can require more than the state minimum, including additional drills, specific scenarios or particular hours. State rules are cited with the date last checked, and where we have not verified your state we say so on the schedule itself rather than filling the gap. Verify before you rely on one. Everything runs on your device.

Questions people ask

Do fire drills have to be at different times of day?
In most states, yes — and it is one of the most commonly cited drill deficiencies. The usual wording requires drills to be held at varying times and under varying conditions, so that a facility cannot satisfy the rule by running every drill on the same shift at the same convenient hour. This schedule moves the time on every drill of every shift, by at least an hour, and shows you which constraint each time satisfies.
Do I need a drill on the night shift?
Where the rule counts drills per shift — which is the majority of the verified rules — then yes, the night shift owes the same number as the day shift. Several states go further and require a minimum number during sleeping hours specifically. Night drills are the ones facilities skip and the ones surveyors look for, so they are scheduled here rather than left to be remembered.
How many fire drills does my state require?
It ranges from twice a year to twelve, and many states count per shift rather than per building, so a three-shift facility owes three times the headline number. Pick your state and the schedule is built on its own rule with the citation and the date we checked it. Where we have not verified a state's rule we say so and use the national baseline instead of inventing a figure.
Is a generated schedule proof of compliance?
No. It is a plan for drills you have not run yet. What proves compliance is the record of each drill actually held — date, time, shift, scenario, evacuation time, findings and corrective action — which is what the fire drill log is for. Your authority having jurisdiction can also require more than the state licensing minimum, and this schedule cannot know that.