The vast majority of business firedrills are arbitrarily caused by someone wanting a deadline met for no particular reason.
Everyone does crunch time not because there is actually a pressing emergency, but because the company wishes to extract additional effort for no additional pay.
Hm, ok. That's not been my experience. For example, I have definitely heard it used in Operations contexts to describe broken shit that needs fixing now -- things that are real problems and not drills. "Drill" to me implies preparation for an event in the future like a test or an emergency.
Everyone does crunch time not because there is actually a pressing emergency, but because the company wishes to extract additional effort for no additional pay.