It's been a interesting week

Due to my birthday trip to FL , it was only a 3 day workweek for me. However, it contained a lot of excitement. Thursday about 12:10 the fire alarm went off. Since I'm the Safety Queen, I knew it wasn't a drill. We all evacuated the building. As we were calling roll, the alarm monitoring company called the security guard. He asked our emergency coordinator what to tell them. He said "Tell them it's a drill" at which point I spoke up and said, "No, it's not". We always put the system on "test" when we have drills. Shortly thereafter the fire department rolled up. After some investigation, it was determined that there was no fire. One of the contractors working on our facility renovation had been cutting some metal, and it's believed that's what triggered the smoke detectors.

Then more excitement yesterday afternoon. Around 3:30 people started reporting smelling natural gas. I called the Maintenance Manager who did not take it seriously for quite a while and was making me unhappy. Finally he started do a walk through. He determined it had to do with the new gas regulator we had installed due to our facility expansion. It had done something similar before. It wasn't dangerous, but he called the gas company as they'd instructed him previously. By this time the smell had dissipated. However, it was soon back and was even stronger. He and the Manufacturing VP set off again to see what was up. He came back a few minutes later and said we were evacuating the building. I thought he was joking. But then the VP came in and said "We're evacuating. Don't shut off your computers. Lock them and leave. Go home if  you can, if not go outside and await further instructions". I was asked to make an announcement over the PA. Someone told me later "I told so and so that was not your usual voice". The fact that my announcement ended with "move NOW" was probably a clue.

There were less than 20 people left in the building due to the time, and we accounted for everyone relatively quickly. I was told the regulator was bouncing up and down. No one in our maintenance department had ever seen it do that. The regulator is right by our air intake, so this was venting straight into our building. They didn't think it was too serious, but they weren't taking any chances as natural gas is no joke.

I hung around until the gas company showed, then I left as I was told there was no need for me to stay. I haven't heard anything since, so I assume everything was ok. All in all, quite an exciting 28 hours.