Date: Mon, 18 Mar 1996 10:43:46 PST From: Bill Fenner <fenner@parc.xerox.com> To: davidg@Root.COM Cc: core@freebsd.org, chat@freebsd.org, tech@cdrom.com Subject: Re: more about net troubles Message-ID: <96Mar18.104351pst.177478@crevenia.parc.xerox.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 17 Mar 1996 08:21:53 PST." <199603171621.IAA11964@Root.COM>
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In message <199603171621.IAA11964@Root.COM> davidg wrote: >It turns out that there was a gas explosion in the Wintel building For the curious, here's an eye-witness report. mpetach@falcon.netflight.com said: > I was driving to work, running a bit late at around 11:10 am, and > turned west on Walsh Avenue from San Tomas. I pulled into the left > turn lane leading into the business park, and noticed the driveway > was blocked with orange cones and a backhoe digging. A woman in a > dark, Pennsylvania green lincoln towncar pulled up into the left turn > lane behind me. When the left turn arrow turned green, I made a > u-turn on Walsh, and entered the business park via a secondary > driveway closer to San Tomas. I glanced in my rear-view mirror, and > saw that the woman in the green car was stopped midway through the > intersection, blocking oncoming traffic, waiting for the construction > crew to move the cones to let her into the parking lot via that > driveway; I guess she figured the earth rotated around her, so why > shouldn't everyone else change to fit? So, as I pulled into the > parking lot in front of work, I looked over at the entrance, and saw > that the construction workers were attempting to be nice, and were > moving the cones out of the way, and trying to back up the backhoe so > she could go past, and stop blocking the traffic that was now getting > very irate. :-) As the worker in the backhoe was pulling the bucket > out of the hole, he must have hit the main, because there was a very > loud "kawoosh" and a blast of white condesation headed skyward. The > construction crew started running away from the hole, and I headed > into work to alert my coworkers to the problem. One of my coworkers > called PG&E while a second one called 911. PG&E immediately said > they were dispatching a crew to the site, and also told us to begin > shutting down any exterior equipment that was likely to cause sparks. > By this time, the smell of natural gas was nearly overpowering > outside, and was becoming more so indoors. We began shutting down > all the air conditioners on the roof, and began prepping the site for > evacuation. Within about 15 minutes, the fire dept. had arrived, as > had PG&E, and began roping off the area, and had us evacuate the > building. We used cellular phones to call back in, and changed the > outgoing messages for the NOC and tech support ACD queues to alert > customers that we had been evacuated, and could not currently come to > the phones. :-) > PG&E began working on isolating the section of pipe, but within 15 > minutes of their arrival, a spark triggered a fireball that roasted > the dump truck, the backhoe, the tree nearby, the signs, and pretty > much everything else in the vicinity. The one good offshoot of the > fireball was that the pipe was actually burning now, and sending > flames ~75 feet in a nice vertical column; the fire dept. immediately > pulled hoses into place, to keep the fire contained to the single > jet, and the nice folks next door at Wiltel rolled out their 75kVa > generator out the BACK of the building, which was approx 150 yards > from the actual gas leak, and fired it up, since there wasn't much > danger of an explosion now that there was a constant flame source > burning off the gas as it emerged. > Since we couldn't get to our cars, we walked to lunch, and answered > pages from various customers who noticed that network connectivity > was spotty or nonexistent to large areas, and explained the > situation. We got back to work by about 2:30pm, the fire was still > going, but PG&E was working on clamping off the pipe physically a few > dozen yards upstream; once the pipe was crushed, and the fire out, it > only took about an hour to get clearance from the incident commander > to air out the building, get santa clara electric to restore power, > reset the PDU, reset the UPS's, and by 3:30 full network connectivity > through our network was restored. > Hopefully this clarifies the situation from a firsthand witness, and > keeps people from blaming Wiltel for sparks or any other such > nonsense.
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