Last Friday, a fire at the Mexican restaurant ElRodeo damaged the Eastern side of Brightleaf South and forced the evacuation of the entire complex, including the offices where I work. I was actually at home because I had a cold. Several colleagues called me around 11:00 AM to let me know what was going on and to confirm that I was not in the building. I shut down all the equipment I could, and I verified via my security cameras that there was no serious problem on our end. No one was hurt in the fire.

A protein fire in  the kitchen vents spread into the top floor of the building and damaged the roof. The fire department quickly doused the fire with ample amounts of water, so the fire damage was contained. Considering that this building is over 100 years old and all the upstairs floors are made of huge wooden beams and the entire structure is held up by large wooden columns, a larger fire could have easily caused structural damage.

UPDATE: I saw the damage today, and the fire in  the exhaust vent from the kitchen totally destroyed the casing in the hallway upstairs.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 20th, 2013 at 9:59 pm and is filed under word up. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.