Car fire in the parking structure

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Seriously, is there a better way to end a Thursday at work than with an extra hour wait for the fire department to put out a car fire in the structure that contains your car? I submit that there isn’t. Especially if that Thursday lands in the same week as the University of California application deadline, and you are tasked to read what eventually blurs into feeling like eleventy billion personal statements.

When we walked out of our center and around the building to the parking structure, we had a vague idea. One of the guys had left slightly earlier, and, upon discovering fire trucks blocking the exit with smoke billowing out, he turned around to warn us.

PC020221
Apparently the VW van kept it together long enough to block the entrance before catching on fire. Luckily, another coworker’s car was one space over far enough to merely be covered in toxic ash and fire retardant (or suppressant, the firemen were gone by the time we made it this far). It must have been completely engulfed just before 7pm. But the fire department responded quickly, and we all were able to leave just after 8pm.
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We stood around outside for as long as we could handle the smoke and the cold.* So a few minutes after we realized the firemen would need some time to get everything organized, we all headed to Starbucks. Because a 5 min. walk to someplace warm with coffee makes most stresses more manageable.

Our chatter stayed mostly small, but worked out nicely since the group consisted of a few coworkers I know only slightly. We talked travel, and shoes, and dreams, and coffee. And it was the best way to spend most of an unexpected hour around work. It made a ridiculous situation fun, and everything worked out nicely.Which is as it should be, really, because none of us had control over anything, and instead of getting angry, we all made it work. And we had coffee.

*I realize that weather in the low 60 degree Fahrenheit range is not cold to many other places in the world, but, without a real jacket, I'm on the verge of freezing.