On Wednesday, November 4th, I arrived at work to find a sign on the front door which said "Evacution in progress. Please report to the nurse." Yes, it said EVACUTION - not evacuAtion. I thought it was either a joke, or a drill. I go inside, tell the peeps in front that their sign is misspelled, and ask what's going on.
Not a drill.
I go into the main hallway which is COMPLETELY dark. Now mind you, we usually have a generator, which gets things up and running if the power goes out. There were no lights. And initially in the main hallway there aren't any windows. Oh joy.
I'm getting to the reason - gimme a second.
I check in with the nurse. I ask what the heck is going on. She says "we're evacuating down to Western State." I said "Are the kids already down there?" No. They're sitting in the dark on the unit. Luckily though - on the unit - there's a skylight and various windows.
Then I get with some of my other social work peeps to discuss.
The basement flooded. Rumor has it - 3 feet of water. Blew out everything. Lucky the generator didn't kick on - otherwise major electrocution.
So we sit around and wait. The kids have already packed their stuff and are ready to go - but WSH (Western State) has to prepare a place for us.
Oh, and did I mention that the doors in our building are electronic/magnetic? No power=no locks. We had a couple of kids realize that and run out, but not too much of mass chaos. Until administration told us to discharge as many kids as we could. That meant us social workers had to do work. With no phones. And no lights. And we had to call people to come get their kids? Hello cell phone minutes.
The flood happened shortly before 6am. Kids were told to get ready to move at 8am. Actual move occurred at 3:30pm. We load the kids up on little buses and head down the hill to our new digs. Which SUCK.
Keep in mind we're a mental health hospital. So everything is safe - no sharp anything, sprinklers out of reach, ceiling tiles out of reach, etc.
New digs - not so much. Low ceilings (I could reach them) with exposed sprinklers and lights, and kids had to bunk up with each other instead of having their own room. There were also no offices for any of the doctors, social workers, or admin staff. Most people were just milling about. Then we hear that our new digs are temporary, and they're working on another building.
Friday the 6th, we move again. After a coworker and I bust our asses helping to clean, move furniture, make beds, and get stuff from our orignial building. While several of my coworkers sat on their butts.
So Friday we move the kids AGAIN. And our stuff. AGAIN. Now we're here for the duration. This building is slightly better than the last, but still not as great as our original. We didn't have computer access until Tuesday. All of our work goes on an intranet site, shared folders, etc., which made things difficult until we got a computer again. I now have to share an office with 2 people instead of just one. I think I'm going to kill them both before it's over with.
Now the rumor is that the flood was 5 or 6 feet deep in the basement. Fact is that a water main broke where it comes into our building. It flooded out our entire mechanical system, our heating system, and our phones. They have to replace the boilers, get the electric up and running again, they've already fixed the broken pipe, and they have to redo the phone and internet stuff. We've been told it could be 3 months in this building.
The up side - this place has tunnels running from building to building. And the building next to us is empty - so it's pretty fun to go exploring. And my boss is no longer located in the same building as me, so we're having a good time.
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1 comment:
Damn I love working in this field.
Hey, keep in mind those tunnels are NOT the same as the ones at JMU...be careful missy.
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