Fire -

I was working at my desk yesterday morning, shortly after I wrote yesterday's entry, when we heard one of our coworkers yelling, "Fire! Everyone get out; this is not a drill. This is a real fire!" Took a moment or two to sink in, but I grabbed my purse, my jacket, and some bills I had on my desk, (funny what you find to be truly important in an emergency, huh?) and ran out the door with the rest of the accounting department. As we made our way through the building, (we're in the very back) you could see thick smoke, and smell the most awful burning smell, as we all rushed out.

Once outside, we found out what had happened. Some of the lights had cut off in the customer service area, and they started noticing smoke coming down from the ceiling. A couple of them pushed up on one of the ceiling panels, and saw flames spreading throughout the insulation above the ceiling tiles. It was an electrical fire, started by a small spark when a light shorted. Wouldn't normally be a big deal, but with the dust up there, it ignited.

Seven firetrucks, and numerous emergency vehicles later, our parking lot was swarming with people. We all stood outside, all noting what an awful smell was coming from the building. Ugh. 15 or more firefighters headed into the building with extinguishers and the big water hose. Hello, water damage. We all stood outside for the next hour as they extinguished the flames, and used heavy duty fans to pump out the smoke from the building.

Over an hour later, we were cleared to head back in. Some people opted to leave because of the smell, but the fire chief himself said the fumes were not toxic. We were all kind of hoping we'd be cleared to go home for the rest of the day, but no such luck. :) The burning electric smell is still ever-present this morning, but we're all just thankful that no one was hurt, and that the damage was pretty minimal, considering how bad it could've been. The building committee is going to have a full electrical inspection done, to make sure this won't happen again anytime soon. Pretty scary to think that something so small could turn into such a big thing.

Well, today will be pretty busy, but hopefully nowhere near as eventful as yesterday was! ;-) Thank God it's Friiiiiday! I'm definitely looking forward to the weekend. :) Hope you all have a great day!

¶ 8:11 AM