September 2004

It has definitely been an eventful night in the region, with the remnants of Hurricane Ivan moving north through Virginia and Maryland.  I was working out at the AT&T datacenter this afternoon when I heard on WAMU radio that a tornado warning had been issued for Loudon county.  I didn’t think much of it, while the sky was dark and there was clearly a storm moving in, I could still see flights landing at Dulles (which is only a few miles south of where I was).

My colleague Chris () and I headed from the datacenter across the street to Old Dominion Brewery to take a break before tonight’s work schedule.  A few minutes into our pitcher of Belgian Ale and plate of Texas Nachos the restaurant lost power.  It’s always exciting when the lights go out in public, and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves.  A few minutes later, one of the staff members yelled for everyone to move away from the windows and stay close to the floor.  We joined a large crowd of people headed to the men’s restroom when I passed by a door and looked out.  I saw a very large tornado only a few hundred feet away and kicking up a lot of stuff!  After a few minutes in the bathroom, we were given the all-clear and emerged back to our table to finish up the nachos.  We left what cash we had on the table (since the power was out they couldn’t run any credit/debit cards), and headed back across the street to assess the damage.

As we approached the datacenter we saw that part of the building was completely gone, with remnants of the sheet metal from the roof strewn about and wrapped around trees/light poles.  There were downed trees everywhere, and we noticed that the cars in the parking lot were missing windows.  Luckily the part of the building that was ripped apart was not utilized, but we noticed that one of the main sprinkler system pipes had been busted open and was spewing water everywhere.

The guards at the datacenter were running around trying to assess the damage, and we were most interested in recovering the data backup tape from our client’s cabinet.  A few minutes two firetrucks with local firefighters came on the scene to make sure the building was stable and to control any spectators.  The term they used was that there were “exposed resources” and they wanted to make sure people stayed away.  And while most of Ashburn had lost power, the datacenter was still well lit thanks to the backup generators.  In fact, we didn’t have a single system outage.  The firefighters did indicate that they believed a “secondary collapse” of the part of the building affected was imminent.  I guess I can understand that, most of the roof and many of the supports in that part of the datacenter were absolutely gone.

Just as we thought the dangerous part of the storm had passed, the firefighters packed in their trucks and left quickly.  I asked the person in charge what was going on, and he said that another funnel cloud had been spotted near Dulles and was moving north toward our location.  Luckily that never developed into a tornado.  We did obtain our tape, and we headed out.  After a quick bathroom stop at our manager Dan’s house only a few blocks away, we raced back East toward our mutual apartments near Washington, beating more large storm cells that were headed into Loudon county.

I believe this makes my fifth tornado that I was this close to.  I guess I’m just your average mid-westerner, huh?  I definitely can’t say I wasn’t scared, but I did feel for the datacenter security guards who thought it was all over for AT&T as they looked out the window and saw a very large tornado headed straight for them.  And of course, this is the first day I forgot my camera-enabled cell phone at home, otherwise I’d have some on-the-scene pictures to share.  I have to go back out to the datacenter tomorrow and I plan to bring my camera along to grab some pictures.  I’ll get those posted for all to see if you’re interested!

The great irony of this situation is that the whole point of us working at AT&T today was to move our last client out of there and over to MCI’s datacenter.  Luckily everyone at the datacenter and Old Dominion walked away without any injuries, and I learned once I got home that there were several other tornadoes that touched down in the Maryland/Virginia area.  This will definitely a story that Chris and I will share for years, just another night in the life of an IT consultant!

UPDATE: Apparently AT&T has suspended access to its datacenter now because there is some question about the structural integrity of the entire building.  But I still have to be out in Ashburn tomorrow so I’ll stop by and check it out!

Words to live by: I’m not crazy, I’m an enthusiast!

I might just claim credit for that quote, but it’s so cool that someone else probably said it before. But if I’m the first one to publicly acknowledge the quote, then it’s MINE!! That and when I Googled for it, nothing came back as conclusive. And it does seem to apply to many facets of my life.

Also, I’m curious about something. I’ve always used the word nutcase but recently I’ve heard a lot of people (including the This Land song from JibJab) use the term “nut job”. I guess they’re the same thing, but when did the latter become popular? It could also be one of those things that I’ve heard a million times before, but just recently noticed and now seem to hear it all the time. Any comments on that?