Grab a fire extinguisher!
The construction workers redoing the lab across the hall from my office sort of started an acetylene fire this morning. I heard it happen as I was washing my hands in the bathroom: first there was a loud clang (tank falling over), then there was a loud whoosh (ignition), then there were about four or five panicky voices shouting “GRAB A FIRE EXTINGUISHER!” all at once. As I opened the door and stuck out my head, I saw a crowd of people booking it for the exit, so I left myself and shooed away a few people heading for the building in question. The fire department was called in; they put out the auxiliary fires ignited by the burning tank, knocking out a window in the process, and flushed the halls of smoke.
We’re all back in now. Fortunately, nobody was hurt, and the damage was confined to just the one area, so aside from the construction delays and pervasive smoky odor things are pretty much back to normal.
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