8 Times Nature Got in the Way of an AV Installation

When the Earth Shook

“Irony abounds in this story: I was doing an emergency operations center for Homeland Security in Washington DC. Idea behind the project was that it was a large conference room that could be converted in short order to an emergency ops center, with dual 90″ monitors up front and 3 60″ monitors in the back.

We were working as usual, wiring both the room and the rack, when the quake started. We were using wheeled office chairs for work chairs, so our entire chairs started rolling back and forth on the tile floor. After it was over, and a couple rounds of “are you OK/what the heck was that?,”  we were told we had to drop everything and get outside.

We joined the rest of the installation outside and waited. Cell service was basically down and we were very much in the dark as to what was going on. Eventually we were told that it was an earthquake, and that the building had actually cracked. They weren’t letting people work inside until a structural engineer looked at it. They let us go inside for about 3 minutes to gather our tools and laptops, but otherwise, nothing.

My biggest mistake that day was that I had rode Metro (DC’s subway) into work and now would have to ride it home: it was packed, with little to no AC, running at 15MPH to make sure they wouldn’t derail if there was any track shifting.

The job was delayed the rest of the week (2 days) while they worked it out. The building was deemed safe and we got back to work the next Monday. It delayed that job, and also threw off lots of other jobs all around the city.”

• Harry Meade, MCW Solutions