Adventures in My Mind
 |
 |
 |
 |
Jul 1, 2004
Surreal Thursday afternoon:
At around 1:30 an announcement blares through the intercom: "May I have your attention please? May I have your attention please? Duquesne Light has asked us to shed some electricity. We are shutting off the lights on floors 25 through 54. Some elevators are not working." Message repeats. Shed electricity? Elevators not working? What?
This goes on every 10 minutes for about 40 minutes. Reaction is mixed: intrigued, annoyed, scared, fascinated, conspiritorial.
Then we are all called to the large conference room. The rumor is that do to some very unspecific electrical problems the building is being closed so we'll all be going home early. We were told to get ready to leave.
Sure enough, about 10 minutes later, the trigger is pulled. We must "evacuate."
More announcements follow, giving us directions on which floors are to leave. The people on floors 17 through 54 had to walk the stairs the 16th were the elevators are working.
On our floors turn, I exit the building. Apparently what ever had afflicted our building only infected our building. The rest of the city was going about its late afternoon rituals. It was only 3 so traffic was light and there were few peds, but all was normal.
The last time I was evacuted from a downtown Pittsburgh office building was on 9/11. Emotions weren't nearly as high today, but that memory was touched. Whatever the problem, it certainly didn't appear to be dire, as it took over an hour for the evacuation to commence.
I wonder if they'll ever tell us what happened?
0 Comments | Link to this post posted by Teddy 8:26 PM
