Free Fire Drill Log Template (PDF + Evaluation Forms)

The fire drill log

The log is one page for a whole year of drills at a site: a row for each drill with the date, the type, the scenario, how long it took, what went wrong and who signed it off.

A drill is only useful if you learn something from it, and a log is how you see the pattern: the alarm nobody heard in the warehouse, the exit that was blocked twice, the AED that took four minutes to arrive. Write a row after every drill, whether it went well or not.

The log covers four kinds of drill, each with a one-letter code: F for a fire or evacuation drill, S for shelter in place or severe weather, C for a cardiac emergency (AED) drill, and O for anything else, such as a lockdown or a chemical spill. The time column means something different for each. For a fire drill, it runs from the alarm until the building is clear. For a cardiac drill, it runs from the moment someone finds the “victim” until an AED is at their side.

Pages two and three are evaluation forms, one for fire and evacuation drills and one for cardiac drills. Fill one in during each drill, then copy the headline numbers onto the log.

What to record for each drill

Record when the drill happened, what kind it was, where, who took part, how long it took, what went wrong and who will fix it.

• Date and time, and whether the drill was announced. Unannounced drills show what people really do; announced ones are better for teaching a new plan.
• Type and scenario: the kind of drill, the area, and what you pretended had happened.
• Who took part: how many people, and who led and evaluated the drill.
• The timeline: clock times for the alarm, the last person out, the head count and the all clear, or for each step of a cardiac response.
• Problems and fixes: what went wrong, what you’ll change, who owns each fix and the date it’s due.
• Sign-off: the evaluator’s signature and the date the results were reviewed with staff.

OSHA’s emergency action plan rule, 29 CFR 1910.38, doesn’t require drills, so it has no rule for recording them either. Keep the log with your emergency action plan anyway: it’s the easiest way to show a fire marshal, an insurer or an auditor that the plan is practiced, not just written.

How often to hold fire drills

OSHA doesn’t set a drill schedule for most workplaces. Its guidance is to hold drills as often as it takes to keep employees prepared, and your fire code, your state or your insurer may set a schedule for your type of building.

When another OSHA standard calls for an emergency action plan, 29 CFR 1910.38 sets out what the plan must cover and requires training employees on it, but drills aren’t one of its required elements. OSHA’s Evacuation Plans and Procedures eTool recommends them all the same: it calls practice evacuation drills a good idea, says to run them as often as needed to keep people ready, suggests bringing in the fire and police departments where you can, and says to evaluate each drill with managers and employees afterward. The same eTool suggests retraining employees every year.

Fire codes are where most drill schedules come from. States and cities adopt a fire code, often based on the International Fire Code or NFPA 101, and these require evacuation drills on a set schedule for some kinds of buildings, such as schools and health care facilities. The schedule depends on the code your area adopted and on the type of building, so ask your local fire marshal what applies to yours.

Cardiac drills have schedules of their own in some places. Texas’s 2025 school law, SB 865, requires every school district’s cardiac emergency response plan to include annual practice drills, and federal guidelines for AED programs in government buildings recommend a mock drill every year. If nothing else sets your schedule, hold at least one evacuation drill and one cardiac drill a year, and more often when people or the building change.