Updated July 19th (see below)

Today, work was going well – I was making great progress on my OfferRecV2 project at work – when there was a fire, and we had to evacuate!

I got some pics, but nothing really impressive – no major flames or anything, just one picture with smoke, then some with coworkers and fire trucks.

I was sitting at my desk, and I heard a “pop” and then a bunch of lights went out like a power failure – my two monitors both died, but then they came back; my PC didn’t even reboot. Other people in my area had their machines totally lose power. Then a few more lights flickered out, and we were wondering what was going on – the problem was clearly internal to the building at that point, but we thought it was a circuit breaker issue. At this point, my PC also lost power, but I had already saved my work so I wasn’t too worried about that.

I put my jacket and sunglasses on and grabbed my keys, because Chris B. and some others said “Hey, looks like a good time for a walk”, but then I went to the kitchen to get a drink – on my way to the kitchen, I saw a few coworkers flicking switches in the breaker box. While I was getting my drink ready in the kitchen, the fire alarm started going off – not a constant alarm, like we have at home, but a pulsing one. Because of the pulsing, I thought that it might be related to the circuit breaker switch-flipping, like it was resetting the system or something.

On my way back to my desk, I noticed that everyone was lining up to obey the alarm – and then I saw a wisp of smoke. I high-tailed it to my desk, grabbed my backpack and my hat (can’t forget my hat!), and got in line with everyone else. The smoke was starting to get a bit worse at that point, but things were moving in an orderly fashion (if a bit slowly – but it takes time to evacuate 80+ people).

Eventually we made it outside, into a giant throng of coworkers and passers-by. I bunched up with a few friends (Rich H., Jordan N., and Chris B.), and we basically milled about and made sure that everyone from our department was accounted for (although I admit, the others, especially Jordan N., totally took the lead on this part).

After a bit of loitering, the fire trucks showed up – four of them! – and they got down to business. No smoke was coming out of the building, which I think is a good sign, but they did end up running a hose through and bringing in some turbofans, so there will probably be a bit of damage.

At one point, just as the first fire truck showed up, a random lady came by and urged us to move down the street a bit – I have no idea who she was, but many coworkers complied – some of them ended up walking in front of the fire truck by mistake, and the driver sounded the horn to get people moving

We milled around for a while on Broad St., in front of a few businesses – I feel bad for accidentally annoying the shop owners. A little while later, the bosses gave the all-clear for people to go home; clearly, no more work was going to be accomplished this afternoon.

Update: It looks like the guys in tech *did* accomplish some work this evening; looks like the email servers are back up!

Update 2: Just got word that everything is back up and running, and Monday will be business-as-usual for Neverblue. Sweet! Great job, tech team!