How many evacuations

[Ralphie ★]

have you had to do?  Only once for is when we were vacationing in South Carolina. We always shelter in place for hurricanes. In fact we had to leave Florida once to get home for a hurricane. Bought a generator down there where the weather was good, but forgot to buy gas cans.   It barely fit in the back seat of the rental Elantra. But it was good we bought it there because there were surely none left up here and we needed it for a few days iirc. Thankfully my neighbor is retaared and we let him plug in and in return he kept ‘er fueled up. 

And no, we don’t want to hear aboot any other kinds of evacuations!  

[Further]

We evacuated from work the other day. A four inch gas line separated and thirty PSI natural gas came roaring out. It happened right at shift change so I didn’t get any extra break time out of it 

[maddmaxx ★]

Fire, fire.  This is not a drill.  Fire in the O2 generating plant.  Fire fire.

I was standing one deck above the O2 plant and promptly self evacuated to a point about 600 feet away at the other end of the ship.

[Ralphie ★]

58 minutes ago, Further said:

We evacuated from work the other day. A four inch gas line separated and thirty PSI natural gas came roaring out. It happened right at shift change so I didn’t get any extra break time out of it 

Oh my!  That is sirius!

[bikeman564™]

1 hour ago, Further said:

We evacuated from work the other day. A four inch gas line separated and thirty PSI natural gas came roaring out. It happened right at shift change so I didn’t get any extra break time out of it 

We had to do that because someone ruptured a gas line on the ceiling w/ a high-low Then again because some work was being done ootside, and they found the gas line

[shootingstar]

At my workplace, practice evacuations were twice annually. Govn't office building of 2,000 employees.

We did have mentally unfit member of public get into main floor foyer and set several little fires inside. Person also had a knife.  This was early in morning.  It activated sprinkler system also. Anyway, damage was well over $1 million. Around 2 yrs. ago.

Any public building, where there are tons of public streaming through for different reasons, including front counter services has same level of risk as semi-industrial site.

[JerrySTL ★]

I once worked on the third story of an office building. One day the electricity went out and the fire alarm came on. Time to take to the stairs! Except that the doors from the office to the stairs wouldn't open! Seems that they used electromagnets to hold the doors closed until the code was punched in when entering or pressing a button when exiting. To keep someone from breaking in just by turning off the electricity, they had a battery backup for the magnets! Great except that the button to exit didn't work with the battery. Another guy and I climbed into the ceiling and disconnected the batteries so that we could escape. Thankfully there wasn't a fire.

[Razors Edge ★]

9 hours ago, Ralphie said:

And no, we don’t want to hear aboot any other kinds of evacuations!  

Only one "real" event where we had to evacuate our office was the DC earthquake in 2011.  Otherwise, random fire drills over the years.

[shootingstar]

For another govn't building in Ontario, there was a bomb threat. Real or not, we had to evacuate.  Then 1 of elevator got stuck justs before fire alarm.  And the Deputy Fire Marshal was in there with some others!

For my last employer, there were a number of protest rallies with crowds chanting, signs, etc. in front of our bldg.  The bldg. is beside city hall.

  This happened for different causes, well over 15 times annually. So more police are around.   Working in govn't is a smooth ride....  yea, sure for some people. Not all.

I just don't mention this stuff here in the past.

 

[Wilbur ★]

1 actual hotel fire in Las Vegas.  Multiple false fire alarms in various hotels in the UK.  2 cabin/ cockpit smoke evacuations in aircraft. 

After the Vegas hotel fire, I made a habit of keeping everything critical in my backpack, shoes, clothes ready to go at the door.  I always scout out the fire exits and step count to the exits as well.  Too much training over the years leads to paranoia!  

[shootingstar]

27 minutes ago, Wilbur said:

1 actual hotel fire in Las Vegas.  Multiple false fire alarms in various hotels in the UK.  2 cabin/ cockpit smoke evacuations in aircraft. 

After the Vegas hotel fire, I made a habit of keeping everything critical in my backpack, shoes, clothes ready to go at the door.  I always scout out the fire exits and step count to the exits as well.  Too much training over the years leads to paranoia!  

The last 2 condo blgs. (including present) I bought a home, below 8th floors.  It is precisely for easier evacuation and return when elevator doesn't work. With age, this will not get easier. 

THere was a fire in my Toronto condo bldg., where the smoke from above floors were seeping into my suite! I got out. The hallway air was grey with smoke.

I worked in fire protection engineering and firefighting library with a ton of technical information and studies of evacuations...including tragedies world-wide of people stuck/trampled to death.

[Wilbur ★]

3 minutes ago, shootingstar said:

The last 2 condo blgs. (including present) I bought a home, below 8th floors.  It is precisely for easier evacuation and return when elevator doesn't work. With age, this will not get easier. 

Good planning!

4 minutes ago, shootingstar said:

I worked in fire protection engineering and firefighting library with a ton of technical information and studies of evacuations...including tragedies world-wide of people stuck/trampled to death.

The problem with buildings is you don't have the staff to enforce an organized evacuation or maintain calm and orderly conduct.  In aircraft, certification we have to demonstrate a 90 second evacuation and that determines the number of flight attendants to be carried in order to meet that criteria.  

[shootingstar]

58 minutes ago, Wilbur said:

Good planning!

The problem with buildings is you don't have the staff to enforce an organized evacuation or maintain calm and orderly conduct.  In aircraft, certification we have to demonstrate a 90 second evacuation and that determines the number of flight attendants to be carried in order to meet that criteria.  

For big employers with FTE employees, they do assign staff as fire wardens per floor section.  The speed is what counts if there should be REAL fire.  The problem is some employees just dilly-dally, not believing. 

I was in  another 12-storey office bldg. evacuation for a meeting. I was amazed to see a wheel-chair bound employee in a sports light oriented wheelchair, who DID manage to lower himself down multiple flights of steps.  I think he trained himself physically to do this (!) in advance.    It was quite impressive... after all, I did work in a hospital for wheelchair bound patients.  We were in 2-level hospital. 

[Tizeye]

Other than the fire drills at school and work, can't say that I have ever evacuated. I'm tough, I can take it! Hurricanes...where is your sense of adventure. They are so everyday.  Earthquake? Woke up one morning to pool trap tapping noise. Looked out the window and water in the pool and the water was swishing back and forth with waves pushing over the top edge...and I slept through an earthquake! Granted, it was in California, and I was in Arizona, but still felt it.

[ChrisL]

1 hour ago, JerrySTL said:

I once worked on the third story of an office building. One day the electricity went out and the fire alarm came on. Time to take to the stairs! Except that the doors from the office to the stairs wouldn't open! Seems that they used electromagnets to hold the doors closed until the code was punched in when entering or pressing a button when exiting. To keep someone from breaking in just by turning off the electricity, they had a battery backup for the magnets! Great except that the button to exit didn't work with the battery. Another guy and I climbed into the ceiling and disconnected the batteries so that we could escape. Thankfully there wasn't a fire.

Wow! That doesn’t fly with fire code.  We have similar set up in two of my sites that are in high rises.  There is a plunger on the inside of the suite you can push to disengage the access control system to exit.  

[Square Wheels]

usually a couple in the morning

[MickinMD ★]

17 hours ago, Ralphie said:

have you had to do?  Only once for is when we were vacationing in South Carolina. We always shelter in place for hurricanes. In fact we had to leave Florida once to get home for a hurricane. Bought a generator down there where the weather was good, but forgot to buy gas cans.   It barely fit in the back seat of the rental Elantra. But it was good we bought it there because there were surely none left up here and we needed it for a few days iirc. Thankfully my neighbor is retaared and we let him plug in and in return he kept ‘er fueled up. 

And no, we don’t want to hear aboot any other kinds of evacuations!  

My parent's house that I downsized to in retirement and the house I bought before that are both on high ground, so I never had to evacuate during hurricanes, though we've had numerous nasty ones through the years.

There have been a several times in the 2000's when Tornado Warnings were announced but the storm cells the TV weather was tracking never came closer than 15 miles from me.  Tornadoes were unheard of in Central Maryland and most of the Mid-Atlantic before the 2000's and are still very rare.

When hurricanes get as far north as Maryland, away from the Atlantic Coast the damage is mostly due to heavy rain, the Chesapeake's waters being pushed north, upstream, and back into the tributary rivers serving Washington, Annapolis, Baltimore and some small towns, and the flooding resulting from all that rather than building damage from winds though we sometimes get 100+ mph winds from them.