There was a chemical spill in the University of Washington’s Ocean Sciences Building today and unfortunately I was in it at the time. A man on the basement floor spilled sulfuric acid into liquid chlorine and what resulted was extremely toxic fumes. No one was hurt, and the man who had the accident was conscience and breathing but this made life quite difficult for all other oceanographers that work in that building.

I had just arrived on campus about 15 minutes before all of this happened, but it was just long enough for me to put all of my stuff in my locker. I was sitting with Jaqui and we were discussing my methods when the fire alarm went off and the building started to lock itself down…and when I say “lock itself down”, I am completely serious. Metal panels on the windows and open areas slammed shut as did the doors for the stairwells. Jaqui and I assumed that it was just a drill (since this building has drills all the time) and so we left all of our stuff inside as we went outside. Once we exited, we realized how large of an incident this was since there were at least three cop cars and one of the officers was talking into his radio saying, “The subject is conscience and breathing but we are not letting anyone else in the building.”

In the end, there were at least 6 fire engines, 6 of those red SUV’s, and 10 police cars blocking the roads, and those are only the emergency vehicles I can describe. They put DO NOT CROSS tape around quite a few of the buildings and would not let cars exit from this side of the hospital…they were all directed to the other side. Needless to say, this was an event…and if only I had realized that before leaving my stuff in my locker.

All I can say is, lesson learned. I will never leave a building again without rounding up everything I need and unfortunately I wasn’t able to get any pictures of all the activity since my camera is also locked up in that locker.