Holy Crap. The bridge collapses. I am not trying to make fun of the tragedy. Just thought of a amusing title...
The company I work for is now headquartered in the Twin Cities. We have probably about 15,000 employees scattered around 7 campus buildings and about 15 smaller locations. When I first heard about this I thought of how many people I know in the area and are they all ok.
My first thought was for my team mate, F. I was a bit worried on Thursday morning when he is normally in about 8:00 am and then when I did not see him logged into our instant messenger by 9:30 am I was more than a bit concerned. It was about 10:15 or so that he pinged me to let me know he was in the office. It turned out that he and his wife, who are expecting a baby at the end of the month, were on their way to the hospital for a tour of the delivery area. They drove over the bridge about 20 minutes before it collapsed. It said the hospital was just crazy and they had to postpone the rest of their tour until next week. They needed all available people ready for the disaster.
So... I asked him why he didn't just work from home. He said that he tried to log into VPN and it was down. He then tried to call our boss (he called her home phone, cell phone and blackberry (and she is also out on the west coast)) and got no answer. He did not know what to do so he spent 3 freakin' hours driving into work. It is normally about a 20-30 min drive tops. I told him that if he can't get a hold of our boss to call either myself or another co-worker here in Milwaukee and let us know. I told him that once he started driving and realized that it was going to be so bad, he should have turned around and went home. That was just crazy. The shitty thing is that my boss told him that he should leave 30 minutes early on Thursday so he can 'beat' the traffic... Boy was she generous. He works until 4:30 pm. It will probably still take him 3 hours to get home.
I am just glad that he and his family are all safe and sound.
I have not heard if anyone else from work was impacted.
I also found it ironic that on Wednesday, on our company Intranet site, there was an article on what to do in a disaster situation. We have a dedicated number to call in and get instructions and to leave a message with your status. It was used extensively a couple of years ago during hurricane season. It was used quite a bit Wednesday/Thursday as well.
My thoughts and prayers go out to the families of those injured and killed.
Have a good weekend everyone!
2 comments:
Glad to hear your co-worker was okay. I am sorry for the losses as well. Unfortunately, things like this will continue to occur as long as our government thinks we should put more money in a war that cannot be won, then into fixing the things that could be repaired.
I can't believe you said that!
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