Fire!

Yesterday my office building caught on fire. Around 12:15, the power went out. (some people got stuck in the elevators, but they got them out.) Then there was an announcement to evacuate. So I grabbed my coat and my wallet, leaving the rest of my stuff, including my housekeys, locked in my desk. Even when we had a bomb threat, we were back in the building within a couple hours. We have false fire alarms all the time, and sometimes the fire department even shows up, so I wasn't thinking anything of it.

As it turns out, it was an actual fire. Something exploded in the garage which caught on fire in the electrical closet. About 8 firetrucks showed up. One of them even put up that giant ladder against the building, up to the roof (14 stories). Which I didn't really get, since the garage is in the basement, not on the roof, but maybe they were just being prepared. There was some problem with Pepco not being able to turn off the power and the firefighters refusing to go into the building until the power was turned off, but that got resovled.

Around 3:00, they told us all to go home if we could get there. That we wouldn't be able to get back in that night to get our stuff. Some people left their cars in the garage. I borrowed someone's metro card and got to my papa's, where the doorman let me in to his apartment. I had given my papa a key to my apartment so I was able to get home and get inside.

Everything seems OK today. And no one was hurt, so that's a good thing. I'm just glad it wasn't too cold yesterday. 3 hours is a long time to just hang around.