Evacuated From Work

so today I had a pretty odd day

i was in work as normal when a big shop/store that was a building down from ours caught fire. 

It was the roof that caught fire originally, and about an hour later we were evacuated from our shop with all our customers and told to get our bags incase we weren't allowed back in.

There were fire engines outside our shop front and police had put up a cordon on the street which was why we had to evacuate. Our usual fire point is near the building on fire so we had to go elsewhere.

We ended up going onto another street and outside a cafe near the back of where I work, but we could see the building on fire from where we were. 

At this point it was a pretty bad fire and we could see that, the fire was spreading and the roof was going up. There was really bad, thick black smoke spiralling out of the building and it just kept coming. Then we saw the flames out of one of the top windows, and a gas canister on the roof caught fire. Apparently there were more canisters about to blow too, so we got out of there and I went for lunch with some of my work friends. The whole street was later evacuated as the roof collapsed probably about 5-10 minutes after we left.

I did go back to see what was happening after lunch, a few of us did. The whole building was right up, all the glass was out and it was like a fireball. According to the news flames reached 50 feet high.

Thankfully all the staff working in the shop got out okay, it's made national news as it's an iconic building and over 200 years old. There's now a huge risk it'll collapse, and as its on one of the main shopping streets, for all the businesses along that street it's going to cause big problems. It was meant to be finishing a major 30 million pound restoration in September too.

as our shop is so close I don't know what it means for us being open or not, but it means that business along that street isn't going to be great and will change. It was one of the biggest shops and was incredibly popular. 

It was scary, but not scary at the same time as everyone was safe and out of the way, but it was also incredibly sad that such a beautiful, iconic building has been lost. The whole street has now been changed, there was such a sad feeling in the air too. I feel so bad for all the staff with no jobs to go back too who've lost their personal belongings as well. 

I also don't really have a working phone atm, and had no way of contacting my family to let them know I was okay as it kept dying which made me go and finally sort a new one out today too.

Oh wow, that sounded scary, I’m very relieved that no one was hurt, you included. 

I'm glad everyone was okay, how sad that such a beautiful building was destroyed and that people will not have jobs because of it. That must have been very scary to witness and be around.