Terrorist Scare

We had some drama early this morning in the San Francisco financial district. Apparently, there was a large explosion at the Crocker Galleria, a popular shopping arcade in the heart of the area. The blast was so large that it shook skyscrapers within a three to four block area. T phoned saying she could see smoke blowing downwind to the Citibank Center. While on the phone with her, I could hear the emergency sirens whizzing by our offices headed in that direction. Since a bomb could not be ruled out, all of the neighboring buildings were evacuated including Schwab's headquarters. Now that the smoke has cleared, literally and figuratively, it appears the blast may have been the product of a blown underground electrical transformer. Thank you PG&E for the Friday morning drama. With echoes of the recent London bombings, you could definitely sense the nervousness and anxiety on my floor and across the whole of the financial district. Here is a news account in the San Francisco Chronicle of the explosion (including a photo of the now burned and gutted Ralph Lauren store) (link): "...Among [the evacuees] was Tom McGibben, who works at Thomas Weisel Partners at 120 Kearny, which evacuated its employees. 'We saw the lights flicker at 9:50 a.m. We felt a pretty good shake. At first, we thought it was an earthquake. We saw smoke. The alarms in our building came on. At around the 20th floor you could smell something. At that point, we began to think it could be something worse than a quake. There were flashes to 9/11.' Tim Keenan, an employee at Charles Schwab, said he was evacuated from the 17th floor of the same building. 'I saw a flash of light. I looked out of the window. I saw people running and screaming,' he said. 'Our floor warden then asked people to begin to evacuate. To me, it sounded like a big boom of thunder.'" Hard to believe the fourth anniversary of 9/11 is just around the corner. Judging from the collective jitters felt throughout the financial district this morning, September 11, 2001 was apparently not that long ago.