meisa's lagoon

today we had a strange series of events that led to half of northwestern being evacuated for a couple hours.

it started with our new japanese postdoc dropping and breaking open a bottle of one of the world's stinkiest chemicals. the smell leaked into the office and started to go down the hall, so we weren't surprised when the guys from downstairs ran up claiming that they were smelling stuff in their lab. turns out what they were smelling was not the chemical in our lab, but was instead coming from a gas leak several buildings away. so because of the gas leak, the firemen quickly evacuated all the surrounding buildings. since it was about lunchtime, a lot of NU students filed over to the student union to eat. but at some point during all this mess, a grounds worker cut off a tree limb that fell onto electricity lines which cut power from the surrounding stoplights and several of the campus buildings, including the student union. so now everyone is milling about with no where to go, traffic is backed up and there are fire trucks everywhere. and finally, just to add to the madness, because everyone was evacuated so quickly, a student in the science building next door left their reaction unattended and it started a fire in their hood.

thankfully, everything is under control now. the lab still stinks and probably will until tomorrow, but that's life in the chemistry lab. i feel so bad for the japanese postdoc though. i don't think he realized that the massive evacuation was not due to the 5 milliliters of stuff he spilled, and but instead because of this strange series of coincidental events.