I can never think of anything exciting to write on this site anymore, then when something super-exciting happened the other week I forgot to tell anyone about it.
The building across the road from my work office collapsed for no apparent reason. I should mention that I work about 200 metres away from Scotland Yard and just a few blocks from the Houses of Parliament, so there was a bit of a terrorist scare being fed by the media coverage of it.
I think it was a Tuesday or Wednesday around 4.15pm, we were all working away in our fourth floor office, when suddenly there was this huge rumbling sound. It sounded like a mix between a landslide (which I haven't actually heard in real life) and a dumptruck tipping up its contents into the street. It went on for much longer than that would have taken though. We all looked at each other, and thought that maybe a truck ran into the building across the road.
When we peeked out the window there was black dust and smoke pouring out of the corner street. Seeing as I didn't hear a bomb-type noise and was relatively confident we weren't being lured out on the street in order to be blown up, I decided that it was ok to run outside the building and have a look at what was going on.
It was very cool: the whole top two floors of the building had slipped off into the street below, and parts of window and wall were dangling precariously out over the edge. We saw a few dust-covered people unhurriedly walking out of the street but didn't hear anyone calling out for help. There was this big pile of rubble in the middle of the road with huge blocks of concrete. The scariest part was that if the building had collapsed on a Friday, there would have been stacks of people out on that street drinking beers. There was no way anyone who was squashed under that rubble would have been walking home that night.
Eventually the police got there (200 metres - bit of a trek) and shooed us all away. The best part was watching the dodgy home video/mobile phone pictures and speculation start to pop up on Sky News and the BBC. It was about 30 minutes before the collapse appeared on the Sky ticker, then after that they were running stories about a possible bomb and quoting eyewitnesses who said they heard a bang. Hmm, whatever.
I didn't find out until the next day that there was one guy trapped up inside the building. He broke a few bones and had to sit under a collapsed building for the 9 hours it took to free him, but he didn't die so I figure I'm allowed to enjoy the whole building collapse incident without feeling guilty.
I don't think people know exactly why it collapsed. I hear that they were renovating inside and that might have caused it. The street has been blocked off ever since and I got to see them pull it all apart. The best bit was when they craned out all the motorbikes that had been parked on the street under the building. I was up on the fourth floor when I saw a motorbike flying past the window. You don't see that every day. The bikes were completely pummeled. I took some photos on my phone but don't know if they'll post online very well.
Anyway, that's it! That's my exciting post for this week/month/year!
