"Are they filming a movie?"

Last night I had one of the biggest adrenaline rushes I've ever had! Ryan and I were watching a movie in our apartment and we had been hearing sirens for about an hour. We just kept hearing more and more and they were sounding closer and closer. We went to our windows and stuck our heads out and saw that our entire street was closed and was completely full of emergency vehicles. Not just ambulances, police, and fire trucks - there were NYC Emergency Response, OEM (NYC Office of Emergency Management), CBRNE (NYC Department of Environmental Protection - we think the initials stand for Chemical, Biological, Radiation, Nuclear, and Explosives). There were easily 200 workers just on our street. It looked like a scene from 24. We went down to find out what in the world was going on and learned that suspicious white powder had been found in the building across from ours, which houses several diplomatic offices. They set up a big tent in the middle of the street (pictured above) to hose off people who were in the building and exposed to the white powder. I actually heard a worker on his phone say "I'm confident this is not a biomedical threat, however I am not comfortable exposing of it in the sewers". Once he saw me he started walking away so I couldn't hear anything else. Ryan and I got to know a lot of our neighbors. One man walked up and asked if they were filming a movie. We hung out about an hour and a half - who could sleep anyway with all of that going on outside! Plus, I wanted to make sure everything was ok. All of the workers were so calm and actually seemed kind of bored. This isn't anything new to NYC First Response workers. We hung out with ABC news about 30 minutes getting the scoop from them. The 2 workers we were talking to love Nashville and loved talking to us about it. The last link below is the live news report that we watched as it was recorded on our street. What a crazy night!!! Thankfully, the white powder tested negative for anthrax or any other dangerous substance and no one who was directly exposed has shown any symptoms.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-11/10/content_12426186.htm

http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local-beat/Envelopes-Containing-White-Powder-are-Sent-to-3-City-UN-Missions-69627952.html

http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7016950074?White%20Powder%20Sent%20To%20Foreign%20Missions%20In%20New%20York

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/video?id=7109316