[removed]

Kidding. Kidding.

Recap: A tripping indigent decided to huff a building fire.

Part 1

Part 2

Writer’s Note: I sincerely apologize for keeping all of you waiting. Sometimes I have to live new tales. Unfortunately, yesterday afternoon at work was one that I might tell another time.

Enjoy.

$BT – Me

$NOC – NOC tech with [Telco]

When we last left off, I was standing outside a smoking building while $CE and the rest of us waited for the fire department to show up.

It wasn’t long before the entire town’s worth of fire trucks, police cruisers, and ambulances had arrived, and after assessing the situation, had put out the smoke, taken statements, and given oxygen to those who needed it (respectively).

The night seemed like a bust, save for the fact that the paramedics had fresh cups of house blend coffee that they were kind enough to share (even if they were a little bit weirded out about my Olympic level sprint for their thermos).

Job well done for them.

We go home, because work has concluded.

The end. Right?

Except, it didn’t exactly turn out that way.

I did, in fact, go home. After a nice shower and a fresh cup of tea (I’m not a total savage), I was settling in for a quick snooze before cruising into some day shift work and OT money.

Side note:

OT means overtime

I shouldn’t have to tell you that.

No sooner had I curled up into a ball under my luxurious pillow fort (with blanket moat), when my phone rang.

-Ring-

-Ring-

Fuck off. I’m sleeping.

-Ring-

-Ring-

God. Fucking. Damn it.

$Internal BT – Begone, demon noise!

$BT – [Telco], $BT speaking.

$NOC – Hi $BT, this is [Technician] with [Telco] NOC.

$BT – Okay…

$NOC – Were you working a maintenance event earlier this morning?

$BT – Yes. The building caught fire. I assumed it had been cancelled.

$NOC – Well, management was wondering if we could revert everything back to its previous configuration, as the ring is currently down hard.

Is this person serious?

They had to have been messing with me.

$BT – The building caught fire. The power is out. The last thing I heard was that the building was being checked to make sure it didn’t need to be condemned.

Side note 2:

I have no idea what the proper terminology is for building inspection by a fire department/city. If someone else wants to chime in, I’m more than happy to learn. I just remember that I was told the building needed to be checked before anyone was allowed back inside.

$NOC – Right, but both the old and new ring are down.

$BT – Building. Fire. I have no access to the building.

$NOC – Yes, but it’s really important that we get these customers back up and running.

$BT – The power is out. Best I might, and that’s a very strong might, be able to do is bypass the local mux at the patch panel, because as long as the power is out, the local [Brand] chassis won’t be able to process anything. And even then, you guys need to make sure that the ring will still work, because I have no idea if the fiber drop into the building was damaged. And that’s if I can even get into the building.

$NOC – Great! I’ll tell management that’s the plan!

$BT – No, you’re not-

-Click-

These people.

This is why I need coffee.

With what I can only describe as the pace of a drunken snail, I crawled out of bed, threw some clothes on, and drove my ass back to the colocation center, the still smoking colocation center that my $NOC and upper management wanted me to go inside of and work in.

I was ready to turn around and say, “Fuck that, talk to OSHA,” when an odd thought ran through my brain.

A few months prior, at the line between where the fiber drops into the building began and the official, “Outside Plant,” ended we had installed a pedestal.

Side note: 3

A pedestal in telecom is quite literally a hollowed out pedestal with small patch panels inside of it. This allows you to cross connect any outside plant pair, to any pair in the drop and vice versa. That way, if something happens you have a way to temporarily fix it by rerouting the traffic onto a new, physical path.

Being as I had ran the cross connecting jumpers, all I needed to do was bypass the building, connecting the outside fibers coming towards the parking lot with the outside fibers heading away from the parking lot. Essentially, I was going to turn the pedestal into a passthrough.

Lucky for me, I actually document all of my work.

Epilogue:

We were fortunate. None of the equipment in our cage was damaged, and we were able to get everything back to normal just a few weeks after the fire. Though the fire did make a hell of a mess.

I got a [Company Brand Award] for my efforts (a literal piece of colored card stock).

The colocation center eventually changed management and the building was rebranded and repaired.

I’m skeptical of its workmanship.