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The Wrong Squid: Fire in the hole
So when I got to work this morning, I showed up right as the fire alarm was going off. I stood in the crowd figuring it would be over in a few minutes, like always. The fire trucks showed up, and after a few minutes, they put the ladders up onto the roof, and started shooing people away from the entrance. None of my coworkers were outside, so I called up to the office. I could hear the alarms going off in the background, but the coworker on the phone showed no interest in evacuating. I mentioned that the police were starting to chase people out of the building, and he grumbled something about mentioning it to the boss. They came out 20 minutes later, but at least the reason it took so long was because they had to wrap our servers in plastic in case the firemen started spraying water on everything. At this point there were between 7 - 9 fire trucks, two of which had their ladders up the roof. In spite of this, people were still trying to enter the building. If they managed to get in, the police inside chased them back out. I don't know what it takes to make you think, "Maybe I shouldn't go inside," but one fire truck is enough for me.
We stood outside for an hour. They cut the power to the building, and people still tried getting in. Finally, they let us in one half of the building, but the other half smelled like smoke and was off-limits. Our hallway's lights were still off, but people were in using the computer labs like nothing was happening. I'm actually surprised no one yelled at us that they weren't able to pick up their printouts because our office was closed.
We unwrapped the servers, but had to wrap them back up again because apparently the fire was in an elevator shaft on the fifth floor, and the water they used to put it out was leaking into the fourth floor. We are on the third floor, so now we're waiting for another disaster to strike.
So that's what I'm doing.
