Disruption

Had a bit of a surreal departmental all-hands meeting last week.  A meeting which they encouraged people to attend in person - which seemed in rather bad taste in light of our site closure.  But it meant that most of the presenters and attendees were present in the meeting room in California.  And then the meeting went decidedly sideways.  First of all a fire alarm went off that necessitated a building evacuation in California.  I have no idea if that was real or just a fire drill, but it meant that the meeting had to be paused.  But eventually it resumed after everyone was allowed to return.  But later on in the meeting, everyone started freaking out.  I had absolutely no idea what was going on, but it seemed genuinely scary.  The cause of this disruption?  I only found this out afterwards, but there had been a big 7.0 magnitude earthquake off the coast of North California.  The biggest earthquake in the region for about 5 years, and big enough to cause a brief tsunami warning.  It resulted in significant building shaking across California - which would have been especially felt on the top floor of a large building, where this meeting was being held.  All of this made for a much more interesting meeting than normal.