Evacuate!

We were in the city today to take care of various errands and job related stuff. Beckie and I went our separate ways for a little bit but decided to meet up to grab some pub photos. I was at the Chancery Lane underground station when the track custodian made a panicked announcement “We are evacuating the station now!” Needless to say, people kind of panicked themselves and started herding towards the escalators. Unfortunately, only one of the three escalators was going up and no one near them thought to push the “stop escalator” button. One woman thought it smart to try and jog up a down escalator on the far right; the crowd cheered and laughed as she slowly made her way up. Finally, someone pushed the stop button on the center escalator, again to cheers. The woman on the far right escalator was in pretty poor shape and she was only half way up. Fortunately, that escalator was stopped, which threw her to her knees. She’ll be alright. There were a lot of people above ground now and almost all of them trying to catch a bus. Beckie was riding the same underground line and she too was diverted up to the streets. I waited about an hour for a bus that was mildly packed and finally arrived at Liverpool Street Station. The reason for the evacuation was a signal failure at Liverpool Street Station, or so they say. There were emergency services at the station when I got there.