The day I did overtime

9.30am there was a power cut. I was halfway typing a social email to a colleague. Down the hall, I could hear the frustration of the mechanical drafter because he hadn't saved his work. A couple of minutes later, emergency sirens filled the air and from our windows, we saw one, two, no three fire trucks turned in, reported at the guard house and proceeded past our sights. Something big must have happened. Somewhere. Moments later, a hazardous materials fire team truck also arrived. Busybodies started making phone calls to find out what happened.

9.45am apparently a circuit breaker caught fire. Can be a reliable rumour. I don't care, I had hoped the power surge would continue such that it was impossible for most of us to do any work. Some of the guys were preparing to play office cricket. So far no one had come to tell us to evacuate.

10.00am power was restored. Sigh, back to work.

8.00pm and I was still in the office, finally packing to leave. I wasn't sure if I was fortunate or unfortunate to be in the office round about 4.30pm when everyone had scooted off after the monthly department meeting that ended at 4pm. I usually take off as well but somehow I decided to return to the office, hoping to do an hour of research on my job. In walked my boss and he hurriedly asked me to help out to locate some drawings for an urgent analysis of the explosion that happened this morning. Explosion? Geez cool stuff. The main distribution board of one of the mills had exploded and because they were oil circuit breakers, they caught fire pretty quickly. A lot of equipment were damaged and production will be down for a few days.

I foresee that our share price will drop again. This has been the second fire in the space of three months, the first being in our Victorian plant. Thankfully, no one was injured when this happened. This has really caused me to rethink my environment that my job requires me to be in. I'm surrounded by hazardous materials, poisonous gasses, high voltage equipment, the list goes on. Will I remain here for long? It's getting scarier by the day.