Fire!

I woke up Sunday morning to the news that a fire had broken out in an office of one of the twin towers in Century City. It took another few hours to find out that not only did the fire break out in my office building, it was in my office!

Thanks to the fast thinking of Abby Feinman (one of my law firm's partners) and the firefighters who responded so quickly to her 911 call, the fire was fairly well contained -- but the water damage from the automatic sprinkler system was extensive.

I had nightmares thinking about all my drenched files, but when I got to work Monday morning, I found out that the sprinklers didn't go off in my area. Whew. Unfortunately, the particles of soot and the chemicals used to clean up the mess forced our office to close at noon, so I got the afternoon off. Did I say unfortunately? *grin*

In googling for more information, I found out the LA Fire Department has a blog! You can read all about the fire here. I find it totally amazing that it took the combined efforts of 95 LAFD personnel to get everything under control. And within two hours, a clean-up crew was on the scene, taking care of the aftermath. It was very impressive.

A little too impressive, really, because I'm expected back at work today.

Sigh.