Wednesday, March 14, 2007

A Change of Scenery

As I was sitting at my desk today, performing my oh-so-stimulating secretarial duties, the radio announced that there was a natural gas leak downtown. As the DJ rambled on about “how cool it would be if cars started exploding like a scene out of a movie,” I realized this leak was three blocks from my office; and serious enough to warrant the evacuation of two city blocks. Oh, and did I mention that, those two city blocks just happened to stop at the corner of my building!

This means, that not only did I have to worry about having a heart attack while doing my filing, but also about burning to death in an exploding building. Luckily, neither scenario panned out. But, I spent most of the afternoon in a daze, wondering exactly how they knew where to stop the evacuation.

2 comments:

Barbora said...

Nothing like a close call to get the old adrenalin pumping!

Something similar happened once when I was up in San Francisco. I was in a meeting and heard muffled sirens off in the background. Then on my way out I noticed staff looking out windows at activity going on in the street below. I just didn’t think much of it at the time.

Then, watching the news that night I saw coverage of what had happened. A manhole cover inexplicably exploded from the street directly perpendicular to where I was meeting. I don’t know if they ever figured out what happened.

I’m sort of grateful that I didn’t know what was going on at the time, or I’d have been a nervous wreck getting out of the city.

Watching the news is not an altogether good thing for me.

Leila V. said...

Too much information is always a bad thing! Isn't that how we got this way in the first place?