So, yesterday I had just settled into my last class of the day when a guy burst through the door and told us to evacuate the building because their was a gas leak. We gathered our belongings and shuffled outside in front of the
building. There were 2 helicopters circling above, 3 fire engines filling their hoses, and a bunch of students and faculty just wondering what in the world was going on.
We decided to walk over to our cars which were parked in the small lot just east of the stadium. There were several fireman who told us that there had been a natural gas line break and we could not start our cars but we could push them to the road and start them there. We pushed several people out when another fireman came running into the parking lot telling us that if anyone tried to get into their car he would have them arrested! Yikes. I guess starting our cars could have caused an explosion! (once we saw the news we realized our car was only about 75 ft away from the break) Anyway, we were all shooed out of the parking lot and I called Nate, who was studying at the Union Building, and we headed up to the Library only to see everyone coming out because it too had been evacuated. It was crazy!
I called my mom and she immediately told me about a show she and Jacob had watched called something like, "Explosions Gone Wrong" and she told us to run far far away. We started walking down 400 S and we were stopped by several news crews who interviewed us. We were live on
KSL around 4:15 and then they showed a clip of me on Channel 2 shortly after, and on the 10pm news. However, I can't find any of the clips of us online :( So we walked down to Whole Foods to get some hot chocolate since it was absolutely freezing out and we hung around for several hours before riding Trax back up to the school where we were finally able to get our car and go home.
What an adventure!! I can't tell you the look of joy on Nate's face when we got the emergency alert text from the school that said all classes had been cancelled until the following day. Nate was so happy he didn't have through 3 hours of Asian Economics that night.
Here is a link to the story: (at about 50 seconds in you can see in the top left hand corner the parking lot where our car was parked)
http://www.truveo.com/Gas-leak-fixed-at-University-of-Utah/id/3575936110
