Those of you that pass through my neighborhood have probably seen the closed road adjacent to the school. (The city public works site says it's for road construction. My understanding is that they're reworking drainage into the wetland/creek between the school and the road because the road is prone to flooding after heavy rains.)

A few weeks ago the construction work caused a power interruption. We were only without power for a few minutes at our home, but it was out for almost half an hour at the school and caused a delayed lunch schedule.

Today the work nicked a gas line. The school promptly followed the evacuation process they had a drill of earlier this semester, lining up the classes by grade (I saw this on a smaller scale during the first grade field trip last month) and quickly and efficiently walking all 500 kids about a mile to their designated school for evacuation. They stayed at the school through lunch, feeding all the temporary visitors (Laurel complained to me later she had to eat "chicken on the bone" but her classmate grabbed an extra pat of butter for Laurel's roll, bringing a temporary truce to their arch-nemesis status) and continuing class in doubled-up classrooms until the fire department cleared their school. They were bussed back to school and ended the day excitedly telling each other what they saw in the classes they visited.

I pieced together what happened pretty quickly from the kids' reports and a few bits of connecting information from a friend that frequently substitutes at our school, but I found it amusing that I heard about it on the local news before the reverse-notification call from the school rang at our home.

Laurel later nonchalantly informed me that while she heard lots of kids complaining about the "long walk", she thought it was just as far as when we walk home from school. (It's a bit over a tenth of a mile further, but I'm impressed by her comparison.)