I work in a high-rise in downtown LA, about 40 floors up. Today we got an announcement from the building that there was some sort of problem with the elevators, and they were going to be unusable for a while. A number of us in the office jokingly groused about what to do for lunch while we were stuck, unless we wanted to take the emergency exit. About 15 minutes later, another announcement came over the PA, and everyone assumed we were being told that elevator service had been restored. Not quite. Instead, we got, “This is Building Security. There is an emergency situation in the building. Please evacuate immediately.” That’ll get you going quickly. My nearest coworker and I headed for the exit stairwell and made our way out.
Ten or so minutes afterward, we emerged outside, only to be told that in the interim, the emergency (an electrical fire) had been contained, and we were allowed to go back up. I opted to go out to lunch instead.
A few observations:
It’s amazing and a little disconcerting to see how backed up a stairwell can get when you’ve got several hundred people occupying it at the same time. During the once-every-two-years drill, the floors are evacuated in stages, so we never see that kind of congestion.
There was an interesting range of reaction from the folks evacuating. Nobody knew what was going on, and no one seemed panicked, but there were people who were very serious, and there were people who were extremely casual and joking and not really paying attention to direction from authorities. A number of people were pissy when they were ordered to go down single-file, complaining that “It’s just going to take longer that way.” Don’t people understand that if fire personnel have to come UP the stairs, you really, REALLY don’t want to be in their way?
I cannot figure out why I thought it was important to grab my company laptop on the way out.
It’s really hard to concentrate on work after something like that on a Friday afternoon. Part of that comes from still feeling it in my legs.
It takes longer than I would estimate to walk down that many flights of stairs.
I felt really badly for the lady walking down near me who apparently didn’t have tennis shoes or flats to change into, and made the entire trip down in fairly high heels.
Sometimes I think it would be a good idea for a high rise building’s emergency personal to play a John Philip Sousa march during an evacuation. People would complain about the music (as well as about being rescued :smack: ) but people would walk in time.
I wouldn’t be to quick to return to a high rise that I had just been evacuated from. Personal choice. Having a security guard tell me that everything is A-OK isn’t good enough. See-ya. Hasta manana, dude.
The lady in high heels can take off her shoes. Her feet won’t get the staircase THAT dirty.
Normally I’d disagree with you about going right back up. However, I later found out that two of my coworkers got stuck in an elevator for about 25 minutes with a group of people who went back up as soon as the all-clear announcement was made. So you may be on to something.
I think you should push for inflatable slides to be put in the stairwells for the next emergency. That would be a more entertaining (and quicker) way of getting down. Of course it’d have to be a single-file slide so the firemen can still get up.
Weird that they did a full evacuation for what was probably an electrical fire in an elevator machine room. Every highrise I’ve worked in did a “go down four floors and wait” kind of plan.
We have the same kind of plan in place. But the fire was in the freight elevator lobby, and the full evacuation order apparently came directly from the fire department due to some of the building systems that were impacted by the fire. <shrug>
From past experience, I’ve discovered that building security/maintenance priorities are different than mine. I’ll choose mine every time.
I was once stuck in an express elevator from 03:00 to 07:00. Somewhere between the 2nd and 20th floor. I was fine but it was a little chilly seeing as it was late January in Chicago. I tried to take a nap but “they” kept calling me every hour to tell me that the elevator was still broken. :smack:
On another occasion, building security (or maintenance?) handed me a “Bomb Scare Reporting Form” with some 20+ questions that we were expected to ask a bomber before we left our station.
I remember a few of the questions -
Who is this?
Where are you?
Why did you do this?
Where is the bomb?
How big is the bomb?
et cetera…
That wasn’t going to happen. I would have pulled the fire alarm and told everyone to GET OUT. NOW!
I also remember stories of building personal telling many soon-to-be World Trade Center victims that it was OK to back into those buildings. And then the buildings collapsed.
I saw your joking FB post about this and now I see it turned into an evacuation and it’s kind of creepy. Like one instance removed from “First he was joking about it on Facebook, and we never saw him again.”
This is the local elementary school. http://www.historicplaces.ca/hpimages/Thumbnails/21535_Medium.Jpg
And yes, those black tubes are/were (they’re supposedly no longer in use) the fire escapes for the second and third floor.
Probably wouldn’t work so well for a 40 story building.
I never went there but every local I’ve ever spoken to has managed to go down them sometime in their youth.
I would also have left for a while, go to lunch, get a coffee, whatever. There’s no way you’ll ever catch me jamming myself into overcrowded elevators with all the other yahoos right after an all-clear. I’m also the type to wait for the next train/bus if there’s one just a couple minutes after this one that’s packed like sardines.