Evacuated from the Leclerc supermarket, Châteaubriant

Went to the “big town” today, and I guess it was coming on to noon when there was a short “wee-wee-wee-whoop!” Which was followed by a rather low toned but loud alarm that sounded for a few seconds and then played a spoken message asking everybody to leave by the nearest exit (in a loop; urgent but not scary). Which everybody did, fairly peacefully. It was pouring rain and the shop staff came out to move on the traffic and give priority to the many leaving – and, frankly, did a better job of it than the local police. Two small fire vehicles arrived, then the one I know as “hook and ladder” (but I think that is an Americanism). After a few minutes the police turned up and told the staff to stand down their traffic management (mistake!). Then the big truck with all the pipes arrived, but backed up and waited near to us. By now maybe 15 minutes had passed and the “urgences gaz” truck arrived. We didn’t see any smoke, so I think this was more a “just in case” because places like that tend to go up pretty quickly – a few weeks ago, the Mr. Bricolage (think B&Q) in Bain-de-Bretagne burned to the ground and the fire was so big we thought it was a field fire in the next town, not a shop 40-50km away!

We did other stuff and the shop was shut for a long time – but you can imagine the chaos that must have been left behind, all the abandoned trollies of a busy Saturday that is also one of the main “going on holiday” weekends (McDo was so packed people were inventing parking spaces alongside the road, in some guy’s field, etc – never seen it like that).

By 4pm, the shop was open and the fluffy-haired woman in the éspace culturel (books, music, videos, etc) had picked up our little pile of books that we left and put them aside in case we came back.

Here are some photos. I’ve shared this publicly so you ought to be able to see it without logging in.¹ https://www.facebook.com/hey.rick.murray/posts/819937544706873

Although they’ll probably never read this, I want to congratulate the staff on a competent, quick, and sane evacuation. It kind of puts the test ones we do at work to shame (and we aren’t dealing with non-employees).

Well, rain has gone. Back home after an exciting day, sitting in the garden with a Starbucks cold coffee drink (to get the brain cells working) on the first day of my two week holiday. Mmm! ;-)

¹ My profile is private and a check it maybe once a month if I remember, it was mainly created because people at work couldn’t believe that a person calling themselves a nerd didn’t have a Facebook profile, and the whole horrible-theft-of-privacy argument was pretty much a lost cause to a group of people that post continual updates of the stuff their children do…

http://www.ouest-france.fr/faits-divers-incendie-au-leclerc-de-chateaubriant-le-magasin-evacue-2737161

For those who don’t read French – a condenser blew up. The cleaner put the fire out with a fire extinguisher. Everybody else arrived afterwards. ;-)

For those who don’t read French, Google can (almost)

http://www.google.com/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=fr&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ouest-france.fr%2Ffaits-divers-incendie-au-leclerc-de-chateaubriant-le-magasin-evacue-2737161

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It’s the largest town around here worth a damn. Laval and Angers are better but city traffic ain’t funny. And Château-Gontier is just kind of confusing.
Why, you local?

Oh, and petrol. Isn’t cheap…

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Oh, and petrol. Isn’t cheap…

How much is it over there? Here in NZ the price has plummeted in recent months; I saw it at $1.64/litre (£0.82/€1.09) yesterday. It hasn’t been that low here in years!