So at work today the phone rings and the nurse answers it. She hangs up the phone and announces, “That was the police telling us to stay indoors until further notice.”
She starred 69 and it was 9-1-1. Fifteen minutes go by. Then an ambulance.
The construction workers continue building across the street. They hadn’t received a call as they are not in the system.
So I go online. No information yet. We GoogleEarth/Satelitte the area. No info.
Call the non-emergancy line for the police. A suicide standoff situation has developed. Streets have been blocked off. Traffic re-directed. Many people inconvenienced as it was the beginning of the rush home hour.
After determining that my path home will avoid the area directly affected I leave at my normal time.
Get home and NOTHING on the damn TV.
Have any of you have a potentially terrifying setup without the “Big Blam”?
Sorry, if this did make your news and the person did suicide or worse "by cop"ped. I just hate being jerked around.
Just what I’ve heard on local news and radio, but the news generally doesn’t report on suicides (there are exceptions) in order not to give other potential suicides any ideas.
I spent a couple of hours in a traffic jam in downtown Dallas late one night when the traffic should have been minimal. It took awhile to find out that the freeway had been closed because someone was threatening to jump off an overpass (they did and died). It was after this episode that I heard about the non-reporting of suicides.
Yup. Middle of grade 10-ish, just a few months after 9/11, some student walking down the stairwells in my high school spots, in the corner, a faint sprinkling of some unidentifiable white substance.
Anthrax! the staff shrieks as one, prompting a mass evacuation as the stairwell is closed off and police flock to investigate.
(The other mysterious white substance, which really would have been a more logical conclusion under the circumstances, was never even considered. Nope, it was anthrax, and God only knows why the terrorists wanted to attack a high-school in downtown Toronto…)
The answer, of course, was a stray handful of either flour or baking soda, I forget which, dropped after a Family Studies (read: Home Ec) class.
Well there was a “Big Blam” at the end, but not as big as I was expecting.
I was on my way home Sunday night after a long weekend partying. Most of my friends had already left town that day, and the rest were leaving Monday. About midnight I am trying to get home, and the road I normally used is blocked off by a cop waiving everyone down a cross street. I figure there was a bad accident down there.
Get to the next street that will take me home, and it is also blocked off. Now these two streets that are blocked off border front and back of a large chemical plant. I am thinking something exploded, fire, or some other nasty thing. I go down another street, the last one before having to drive 30 minutes to come at the area from antoher direction. This one is clear. Was able to get home.
Check the news in the morning, and nothing on it. Head to work, and don’t see anything wrong with the street, or the plant that I can see. Nothing on the news in the afternoon.
Was talking with a friend later, and found out that there was a stand-off with the cops in the area, and the guy had sent dogs after the cops. One cop was bit, guy ended up shot by the cops. Nothing was ever on the news.
-Otanx
A year or two ago I saw 10+ cop cars haul ass past me as I was driving home. Pretty soon they had a roadblock setup. Curious, I circled around the other way and found that streets were blocked off for maybe a half-mile radius, not far from my home, but we were outside the area. This was mostly a residential area. I got home and heard my brother had driven by and seen a SWAT van. We turned on the news and heard that someone thought they had heard a gunshot in their neighbor’s house. Later that day they announced that they had searched the house (I think it was a townhouse), found nothing and nobody, and their best guess was that it was the CAT.
A cow-orker of mine got this exact call on her cell yesterday… are you in Orlando by any chance? The strange thing was she has a WPB cell and we’re in Tampa. Not sure why the Orlando police cared.
Yeah, at school here in Northern Ireland it was inevitable from time to time. A gunman was seen somewhere near our school back in the 90s so while the police swept the area we were kept indoors with the windows open and curtains closed.
My husband works in a prison. About six months ago, an envelope of white powder was delivered to the Warden’s office. The secretary who opened it spilled the powder everywhere, and then carried it through the building to the Investegator’s office, and plunked it down on his desk.
So, of course, the entire building had to be sealed until Haz-Mat could arrive to determine what it was. Hubby wasn’t particularly worried because it had come intra-office mail, not mailed in from outside and it was unlikely any of the inmates would have real anthrax to send to the Warden.
They were all in the office talking about this, and the secretary chirped that she thought it was harmless because it smelled a bit like cocoa powder.
My husband stared at her. “You SMELLED it?”
“Yeah.”
“Put your nose up to it and sniffed?”
“Yeah.”
“Enlighten us: What exactly does anthrax smell like?”
She said nothing. Light dawned and her jaw dropped.
Hubby shook his head. Good to see that the multi-million-dollar two-week course the employees took on what to do during terrorism threats was worth it! Not only did she spread the powder through the whole building, she also intentionally inhaled what could have been millions of anthrax spores.
One night at about 2 AM walking to the SF bus station from the Hooker’s Ball, my boyfriend and I were stopped by a cop and told we had to go “the long way around” because there was a guy on a rooftop taking shots at whoever happened by.
We took the very, very long way around. Missed our bus, too and had to wait another hour. Never saw a thing on the news.
Just thought of another one. In the lab at work someone noticed that there was smoke coming out of the cabinet where a solution of a very explosive compound was stirring on a hot stir plate. We evacuated the entire building.
The fire department arrives, put on their spaceman suits and venture in. Turns out someone left a plastic cover on the hot plate. The smoke was from the plastic.
That would have been a very expensive day, but the fire department said it was good training for their guys and they’d let it go this time. Next time we’d be responsible for all costs (yikes!)
Wow - you think that Google Earth is updated in real time? Bless. This half-built stadium has been completed for a couple of years. And yes, it’s a Google Maps link, but it’s the same in Earth (search for Manchester)
Well no, there wouldn’t be. Part of the fun of GoogleEarth-ing your own neighborhood, once you’ve found your house, is trying to figure out what time of day and how long ago the picture was taken.
I respect that the nursing vocation requires a certain deference to recognized authority, but might it conceivably have entered into her head to ask why? (Let alone tell the rest of the office?)
