When the boogie started to explode

[ornoth]

I started a new project on Thursday the 30th. On Monday through Thursday our project team work at the client site in Cambridge, but on Fridays we work from our corporate office in Boston.

This is going to sound boring, but bear with me for another paragraph. It’ll get really interesting in a second.

So on the 30th I was at the client site, and December 1th I was at Optaros. Last Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday I was at the client site all day. On Thursday I had a one-day business trip to Manhattan, but the team was mostly in Cambridge. Then, on Friday the 8th, we were all working at our office in Boston.

It was 11am Friday when the client’s office building blew up.

Yeah, blew up. Two electricians were working on a transformer in the sub-basement when it blew, killing one of them. Approximately 600-800 people were in One Broadway at the time, and about a hundred were taken to area hospitals for smoke inhalation and later released after the subsequent major fire. The stairwells filled with toxic smoke and some people had to break windows and climb onto the roof of the adjacent parking garage. All this on the most brutally cold morning so far this season. You can read the full story and see image galleries via these links:

Boston Globe Saturday article
Boston Globe photo gallery
Boston Herald Friday article
Boston Herald Saturday article
Boston Herald photo gallery

It made for quite a surreal afternoon, as all the major news sources blared news about the fire and the subsequent shutdown of the Longfellow Bridge and the MBTA Red Line. And then it was on the front page of the local papers yesterday.

So we were very fortunate, in that our team of 30+, who usually work on the third floor, were not in the building that day, and all the client’s personnel made it out safely.

Since then I’ve received nearly a dozen email updates from the building management. It looks like the place will not reopen for about a week, during which time we’ll be hosting the client at our office space by North Station. That’s going to be a big jam, since we’re short on space and desks to begin with.

I still have a bunch of dress clothes over at One Broadway, but nothing irreplaceable. They can wait.

Very surreal. Perhaps I should add an Imminent Danger Pay clause in my employment agreement?