Today we had to climb down 14 floors worth of stairs for our fire drill. My legs were shaking by the time I got down. A good thing I had worn flats in preparation for this event. When this had happened back in P&G, I was wearing stilettos. No wait..that wasn’t during the fire drill. I was prepared for that too. The stilettos incident happened during typhoon Milenyo.**
Fire drills always bring to mind a lot of memories. One such memory happened in KPMG. We were all going about our business in the office when suddenly a voice came over the speakers announcing, “Please remain in your offices, the fire is being contained.” At that, we went into an uproar. There was a fire? How come we didn’t even know about it until it was already being contained? What if it hadn’t been contained and we had been burned?
The more interesting one, though, was the one that happened before that, while I was in WMPC. Fire drills are common, but in this company we also had, along with that, bomb threat drill, terrorist attack drill and oil spill drill. Not your usual drills, eh? For the bomb threat, we were not informed about it. One morning someone called up our HR to say that there was a bomb in our premises. So outside we went, while the police force went about surrounding the office with yellow police tape, the one that you see on tv crime scenes that says “do not cross.” One policeman had a walkie talkie and he was communicating with the bomb squad who were inside the office “looking” for the “bomb.” Everytime the man inside encountered an object he would ask us to verify if it was indeed ours. In the end, they found no bomb and we were informed it was just a drill. Then in the afternoon, alarm bells started ringing to signal a fire and we had to go outside again. A few hours later, a voice came over the loudspeakers saying that we were under attack by the terrorists and to hit the ground and stay low. So my cubemate Chut and I sat on the ground which we covered with newspapers while the police, yet again, swept the area. And as if that wasn’t weird enough, the next day we rode the company vehicles (we had our own bus that took us to work each day at 6am because Sangali is so far away from the city proper) towards Bolong beach resort, laden down with picnic baskets filled with lunch. While we arranged the food on the tables onshore, some of the men swam in the ocean to perform the oil spill drill. Then we all had a picnic lunch together. How cute is that?
Speaking of bomb threats, P&G had one last week. Or rather, the building Petron Megaplaza did. When I read it off my former TL’s YM status, I immediately asked her about it. HR had told all employees about the security threat around noontime, and the building was evacuated. I told Gelle, who was cooking dinner, about it, and said it was too bad she had missed all the excitement. Only her, because while she has never experienced a bomb threat all her life, I have had my fair share.
When I was a child, my school, Ateneo, was a favorite target for bomb threats. Then the policemen would sweep through our campus, looking in every nook and cranny, even pawing through garbage cans. Usually, thankfully, they would not find anything, because it was just a threat (like the one in P&G), and we would go back to our normal lives…sort of. Our parents, of course, would become slightly more paranoid after that, while we kids would be happy that we had missed classes and even joke about making false bomb threats for this reason.
How I wish all threats had been empty, though, but sometimes they were true. When I was in fourth grade, one of my batchmates died in an explosion in Fort Pilar. Then when I was in College, a series of bombs exploded in key areas, one after the other, killing and wounding a lot of people in the process. The atmosphere in the city was tainted with so much fear after that, that once, while we were having lunch in the food court of our only mall, Mindpro, we were shocked when a mass of people started screaming “bomba!” and stampeding downstairs. We did not want to join them and risk being crushed to death, so my companions and I just stood at the side, holding our breaths and each other, wondering if this was for real or just after-bomb hysteria. After a while, the matter was cleared up – some frat guy had started a fight up in third floor, someone had screamed, and some people had panicked and thought the worst things, triggering pandemonium. So on second thought…it’s a good thing Gelle missed all the “excitement.” That kind of thrill is so not good for the heart, especially hers.
**http://mysidecomments.blogspot.com/2006/10/milenyo-moments.html