Electric explosion

The electric substation of the building next to us (at work, not at home) threw a bit of a hissy fit last Thursday. I guess it might be a bit old & it was a bit of a humid day, but soon after lunch (1:30-ish) when Barb came back from lunch she told us that there were black smoke coming out of a roller door downstairs (we didn't know what is/was behind that roller door at that stage), & out of curiosity Faye (who is also our floor's fire warden) when downstairs (to take a ciggy break of all thing!?!?!) & checked things out. By that stage the fire trucks had already arrived & they told Faye that we better start packing 'cause they were evacuating us soon. We did as such, & not 5 minutes the alarm sounded & we were scuttled downstairs, cross the closed-off road, went around the building & went to the assembly area 5 minutes or so away. We're on the 4th floor so naturally be bump into people from lower floors as we went down. By the time we got to the ground floor & crossed the road, the 'thing' behind the roller door start exploding (not like nuclear bomb, mushroom cloud explosion, but loud bangs in quick successions. Much like chinese fire crackers but not as quick in succession). After waiting for a while we were told not to expect to get back in that afternoon, so we all went our separate ways. SOme went home (actually most went home) while I, who is without a ride until 5pm, had plenty of time to kill. Did the library, window shopped, & finally sat down & had a haircut instead. 4-ish & I decided to sneak by to see if there's anyway of going back to the office & surf the net, & the fire trucks were all gone & doors wide open. Great! Spent the rest of the time surfing the net. Lesson of this incident is, while we were praised for our prompt respond to the evacuation alarm, DON'T complain about having to WALK DOWN 4 FLIGHTS OF STAIRS!! Can you actually believe someone complained about having to walk down some stairs!?!?! My typical sarcastic respond was of course, "well then, jump!" No, really.

Meanwhile, the substation is still being fixed. I walked by at least 4 times yesterday. 8:30 - arriving at worl. No one was working on it. 12:30 - out to lunch. Workmen standing by it talking about something electrical. 1:30 - back from lunch. More workmen turned up to sit around the burnt substation having coffee & snack. 4:30 - going to post office on way home. All workmen, including the van, were gone. Roller door pulled down, presumably so that can't tell if any work had been done on the substation. Today (1 week post-explosion) - roller door area still cordoned off, no sign of workmen, again.