The Roof, The Roof

I've had quite the exciting day so far. The Short Version: Oregon Computing Lab is not on fire. You wouldn't know that from the two fire engines that were parked outside, but I assure you that it's true.

The Long Version: I came in today to do a little work, a couple upgrades if you must know. I was sitting at my desk (watching glibc compile) when I heard something beeping. Something short, slow, and repetitive; nothing at all sounding urgent.

After making sure it was nothing of mine (computers beep all the time) I headed downstairs to check the alarm panel. It reads: "01 FIRE ALARM FAULT".

Still not worried because, surely, nothing that beeps so calmly and serenely could be a true fire alarm. "Probably a bad battery somewhere," I said to myself, since I can clearly see that there's no fire in the lab. I entered my code to stop the beeping and calmly walked through the lab to the back office.

I open the door and the room is filled with white smoke. Now I start to panic. I must have looked like the biggest fool asking people to leave the lab because IT'S ON FIRE. I've never had a lab on fire before. Did I actually use the word fire? I'm not sure, but I certainly asked them in a polite way to save all their stuff and exit the building. One guy, however, was still there typing his paper when the fire trucks showed up. Didn't he know that in case of fire you're supposed to RUN FOR YOUR LIFE?

Two fire trucks show up and I lead them to the back office and quietly step aside. At some point I made a call to my boss (who's in Missouri at the moment) to tell him that yes, his building could be burning down. I had to leave a voicemail.

Naturally, the firemen couldn't find anything in the open and wanted access to the one room in the building I've never been in (and don't actually have a key for). After trying a dozen keys or so, Stephen Kemp (skemp) made an appearance and took control. Skemp knew how to get into the locked room!

Sure enough, the culprit was the air conditioning unit O&M has been fooling with for the past two weeks. The firemen shut it off and the smoke cleared from the back office. We setup some fans to circulate air through the building but most of it's fine right now. I'm just hanging around, waiting for O&M to come back, finishing my glibc compile (because I forgot to screen it... doh).

At one point I think the firefighters were joked about cutting through the roof. Like I was going to object.

Comments

Whoa, a false alarm fire in a crowded school is not a good thing! Anyway, it's nice to hear that it was just the air conditioning. But if there ever was one, cutting through the roof would definitely be the best thing to do.