Evacuation

So around 6:00pm on Friday afternoon I was making dinner and I heard a sound in the apartment I've never heard before. It was coming from a central speaker in the middle of the living room. I then thought, "is that the fire alarm?"... indeed it was. I turned off the stove, went to my room and was trying to grab all my recording gear and my camera. I then heard people yelling down the hallway to evacuate the building so at that point I dropped everything and grabbed my cell phone and my wallet.

Taking the stairs down 16 floors wasn't too bad but as I got down to about the 3rd floor I could smell something wasn't right. As we exited the building we saw white smoke coming up through the vents and walked out through the lobby down the steps in the picture above. Firetrucks were on the scene within minutes and everyone was pouring out into the streets. I waited for a bit to see what was going on but obviously with all the commotion no one had any answers. I didn't want to wait around so I walked back to school to wait it out.

I returned back to the building at around 11:30pm and security said it was ok to go back in. There was a distinct chemical odor but I never felt sick or nauseous. My room mate came in shortly after and everything seemed fine. About an hour later we heard the alarm go off again but then it quickly went off. We were wondering if we should get out but we didn't hear anyone leaving the building so we turn on the TV to the front entrance camera and saw no one exiting and that people were actually coming back in.

We thought everything was back to normal and called it a night.

So Saturday morning I wake up and go to school (as usual), but then I run into my room mate in the hallway and he says they had to evacuate the building again! We got in touch with our landlord and found out they were having a meeting about the situation at the Sheraton adjacent to our building. We walked over to our place and it looked like a scene straight out of I Am Legend or Cloverfield. There were even more firefighters, Haz Mat trucks, TV crews, and anyone closer to the building was wearing a gas mask. Uhh, not good. At least they were grouping us floor by floor so the firefighters could go into our apartments to grab "any essentials". At least they were nice enough to grab my laptop.

So for right now, I'm staying with a classmate who lives 2 blocks away. Hopefully they'll clear everything and we'll be able to go back in tomorrow. At this point I have no idea. I'll keep you all posted. For now, I'm ok so don't worry.

Here are some articles on what happened:
CBC News link
Vancouver Sun