Ann McDermott's Blog: Welcome to Manhattan!

Another Day, Another Explosion

Ok, I know I'm supposed to blog about the latest new product, but what happened today was something that just has to be recorded and what better place to do that than my Sun Blog, afterall, it happened at the Sun Office.

You may or may not be aware that Sun's New York Offices are located 1/2 a block from where the massive explosion happened in New York today. Those of us who were there lived through loosing our office on 9/11 did not waste anytime in grabbing our stuff and GOING!!! Thank you to those quarterly fire drills we knew where the stairs were and got out and we're only on the 3rd and 4th floor, so we were the first ones down. Unfortunately the stairs I took lead right to 41st street, the scene of the explosion. We then had to go up the escalators and I yelled "Hurry Hurry" to get to 40th street and literally "run for our lives".

I was sitting there looking at some papers when I heard this big ROAR. Where I sit on the 41st Street side is right above the loading dock of 101 Park Avenue and I often hear load bangs which turn out to be trucks hitting the building. I've sort of gotten used to it, but this was different. So I got up looked out the Window and saw a brown haze in the air and what appeared to be steam coming out of the Chanin Building (41st and Lexington). The Chanin Building is a landmark so of course I thought the worst. I grabbed my bag and my Sunray card and RAN through the office toward the stairs near the Bathrooms yelling "Get out of here, the building next door is coming down!" We had ALOT of visitors in the office today due to the Solaris 10 event and other meetings and everyone followed in kind ... GRABBING AND RUNNING!!!

Once we all got to Park Avenue and 40th Street, everyone scattered and I just ran south as fast as I could. People were just standing around looking up in the sky but I just wanted as far away as fast as possible. Got down to the village to our favorite Mexican place (Maryanne's) and had dinner with friends and one VERY BIG Margarita!

Here's a New York Times article which shows the giant hole in the intersection of 41st and Lexington most of us cross everyday to get lunch.

Posted at 10:21PM Jul 18, 2007 by anniem in Personal  |  Comments[5]