We had a bit of excitement at work this morning. We’d had a fire drill earlier in the week, so weren’t expecting the alarm to go off again, but at about 9:15am today, the alarm on our floor started ringing, initially with the intermittent ‘stay where you are’ alarm, but then ten minutes later with the evacuation ring. We initially thought that it was another drill, but when people who hadn’t grabbed a coat were allowed to go and sit in the canteen, and then the firemen turned up, it seemed that we did actually have a fire.

After about 25 minutes we got the all clear from the firemen, and were allowed to go back in.

The fire was actually fairly small, and had been put out before the firemen arrived, but the cause was more spectacular. As well as being the IT centre, our building is the place where all the cheques and forms come to when people pay for their electricity and gas. Due to the volume we recieve we have automatic machines that open the letters, and sort the cheques and forms, and these produce lots of shredded paper from opening the envelopes. Every so often the machines clog up with paper, so the manufacturer suggested that other companies were using a compressed air spray to clear out the blockage. We apparently already had a spray that did a similar job on one of the other machines, and they said it was fine to use that.

What happened today was that shortly after the cleaning, something ignited with enough force that the pictures hung on the wall in the adjacent room fell off the wall, this then caused the waste paper to catch fire.

Suffice to say that the sprays have been removed immediately, and the manufacturer of the machine turned up on site this afternoon for an emergency meeting with the senior management! Thankfully nobody was hurt, although there were quite a few shocked staff in the post room, however it could have been a lot more serious.