Tuesday, October 30, 2007

This Is Not A Drill

I went to a meeting in City Hall today, about promoting sustainable building practices here in our fair city. The speaker was the founder of a company called DIRTT, or Doing It Right This Time.

He gave a very interesting speech, full of just the right balance of dry, boring facts and light, witty humor. He had quite a crowd, too: I think there must have been close to 50 people in that room.

He only got about half-way through his speech, however, because right in the middle of it the fire alarm went off. A voice came over the loudspeakers saying, "This is not a drill! Please evacuate the building immediately!"

Trust me, you do not want to be in a government building when you hear those words. All sorts of alarming possibilities went through my mind as I wound my way down the exit stairwell. I was thinking anything from a bomb scare to anthrax to some psycho with a machine gun!

When we finally made it out to the street, we found five firetrucks with their crews busily unloading all their gear and hooking up their hoses. They even got the ladder truck up and running.

I never did find out what was going on. I had to leave right then anyway, to make it to my next appointment. By the time I got back, two and a half hours later, they were all gone and it was business as usual at City Hall.

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous9:14 PM

    So it's been a couple of days now. Did you ever find out if it was a false alarm or what? Probably sombody smoking in the bathroom :)

    ReplyDelete