Safety!

Today was the second day in a row that we've been evacuated from our building because of the contractors renovating the other half of our building.

Yesterday one of the guys knocked the head off one of those water spray things in the roof that are there in case of fires. We had to shut the water off to the building. The fire department came. It was exciting. Later in the afternoon one of the contractors having lunch in the equipment yard asked if I had been worried. I said no, when the alarms went off, I checked which one it was, and it was the fire alarm, not the gas, so I didn't really care.

Today the contractors knocked a hole into a gas line. Apparently one of the guys ran into the Dep Lab and shouted "Get out now! We've put a hole in the gas line!". Larry freaks out, "Which one???" Guy is like, "THE gas line!". Larry thinks he's got 5 sec. to live. We all get out. It's the natural gas line, and not even just our building, like one of the mains lines I think. Yesterday the fire department came with 1 truck. This time there were 3 of the big tankers, 2 others, and several police cars. I guess the building could have blown up, but all I'm thinking is thank god they haven't cut a phosphine line yet. Richard says they wanted to tap into our silane line for the new half of the lab, but luckily were convinced that that would be a bad idea.

Anyway, we went to Starbucks. Went back to get our stuff out of the building once the gas to our street had been shut off. Left for the day at about 2:45, which meant I had time to chill at Barnes & Noble before the next Caltrain at 3:45 came by. Exciting times.