Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Plunged into darkness

Essex County Council lost power for abut 50 mins today, due to an explosion of a sub station at the ARU in Chelmsford. Which meant that the afternoon was severely disrupted by finding out what had actually happened and keeping a check on all the different forms of public transport that the team use to get home.

Fair to say it's probably one of the more interesting things to happen during my time as a temp...especially the looks on everyones faces as I replied to the 'Liz, we've lost everything' as I came back from lunch... 'Yeah...have you not seen the huge black plume of smoke over by ARU?'.

Our view was blocked by buildings, but being three/four stories up means there's a lot you can see. The police helicopter (which my line-manager thought was an air ambulance) , obviously the smoke, and all the people who rushed to get lunch when the power came back on.

Sadly one person died in the explosion. And over 8000 people were evacuated from ARU.

Back to work tomorrow, hoping that everything is back online.

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