Lunchroom Emergency!

Big excitement at lunch today! In the employee cafeteria there was a guy on a ladder working on something in the ceiling. Somehow he breached a high pressure chilled fluid line used to cool the building and computer rooms. It sounded like a fire hose. He was up in the ceiling trying to somehow stop it or reduce the flow while he was yelling at someone to go turn off the valves. The guy on the ground didn't know where they were and kept coming back saying he couldn't find them.

He kept grunting and saying "Oh no!". Sometimes it sounded like he was having trouble breathing because of the amount of water flowing over his head, nose, and mouth.

The guy in the ceiling was drenched with freezing cold soapy (anti-freeze?) looking liquid. At one point they rolled a big wheeled garbage bin to catch some of the liquid. The bin was probably about 150 gallons. Water weighs about 8.3 pounds per gallon, that means that the full bin of water weighed about 1,245 pounds, or 0.6 of a ton! They tried to push it, but it didn't move. I bet the axle was bent with all that weight.

The water was blasting full force for about 20 minutes. There is one of those expensive thin screen plasma TV's hanging on the wall right under where he was working. That was sprayed. Art work on the wall was sprayed. We walked to the floor below underneath where the leak was and didn't see any leaks…yet.

We had to move tables three times because water would start dripping from the ceiling where we were sitting. When we left there were puddles of water on the floor on the other side of the building. The water must have traveled along channels in I-beams or cable-runs.

The guy in the ceiling was cut up and bloody on his elbows, hands, and face. He was also probably numb from holding on to the cold water line for so long. The liquid is probably, near the 32° level, if not colder. We were all afraid the guy was going to get electrocuted.

They closed the dining room, but we were already there, so they let us finish our lunch and watch.