[Alan]

Nice picture of the raised paw prints.

No, I'm not making up the two fires in the Fire House.

I got more information today: an electrical appliance and the UPS that powered the dispatcher's computers. We had a number of problems with winds whipping around the power lines and causing arcing and the like - I'm guessing that it induced some powerful surges that set both items on fire. It may not help that the Fire House is a rather aging building with an aging electrical system too. At least the UPS managed to protect the computer from the surge, but they're not supposed to catch fire while doing so.

In fact, that's a general problem here. We have four buildings that I am aware of that are less than twenty years old. Many date to the 1950's and 1960's, and were built at a time when ideas like insulation were considered silly. The Fire House, for example, is a metal building with very little insulation, and many buildings have single pane, drafty windows. A few buildings have been retrofitted or remodeled to varying degrees of success, but the whole station suffers from poor planning - or, rather, NO planning - 50 years ago. Now the whole system has inertia, and it is impossible to change course.

Well, we're pretty much dug out now, but like you said - now that the snow has once arrived, it just keeps getting re-circulated.