I work at a preschool and Wednesday morning is when my room gets an hour to work on our planning. The lead teacher and I (the assistant teacher) had just walked downstairs when we heard a loud thud. It sounded like something large falling on the roof of our building. The power went out. Everyone froze for a second. A parent who had just come in from outside mentioned that there were police cars everywhere.

The school went into lockdown while we figured out what was happening. We ran upstairs, back to our room and yelled “lockdown” on our way so other rooms would know what to do.

Our kids had just gone outside when we left for planning, but luckily the floats were smart and already had all the kids back inside by the time we made it back upstairs. We had the kids sit in their lockers and made one of the floats tell them a story. That float is good at coming up with stories off the top of his head, which was lucky for us because I know I wasn’t feeling creative.

I made sure that our backdoor was locked and closed all our shades. Then I sat down with the kids and listened to the story, after counting all the children several times. Seventeen.

My head knew it was a scary situation, but I wasn’t feeling that emotion yet. We had no power. There was a loud noise. There were police cars everywhere. Looking back, I don’t know why I didn’t assume it was a terrorist attack with the information we had to start. I’m glad I have delayed reactions in situations like this. Freaking the kids out more than they already were wouldn’t have been helpful. I was actually calm enough to enjoy the story.

I remember being surprised none of the kids were complaining that we were making them sit in their lockers for so long.

A few minutes later we had figured out that there was a gas leak near a bagel shop a few blocks from our school and that had caused the bagel shop to explode. Parents began trickling in to pick their kids up shortly after it happened.

We were already down to fourteen kids when our bosses decided we should evacuate to get farther away from it. The lead teacher briefly explained to the kids what was going on and then we grabbed our emergency backpacks and lined the kids up.

Outside smelled like fireworks and the smoke was huge. There were ambulances and news crews everywhere. One even tried to talk to us as we were evacuating. I basically yelled “Nope, we have to go!” when they tried asking me questions. I haven’t been able to find the footage of that anywhere though.

When we made it to our evacuation site we were down to thirteen because one got picked up on the way.

An important part of emergency backpacks when you work in a preschool is fun activities for the kids to do, which sounds amusing but it is very useful. Once we got to the evacuation site we hung out and waited for parents to come. I counted the children incessantly. Some of the other teachers helped call parents to let them know they needed to pick up their kids.

All the kids were picked up within about two hours. In the meantime they colored, listened to stories, ate snacks, and played with a balloon.

It is impressive that no one was killed by that explosion. I am glad we can tell the kids that everyone is okay. One of the kids described a gas leak to me as “sometimes gas gets lost and takes a wrong turn.” It took a major wrong turn that day.

I texted my wife once we were safely evacuated to let her know I was okay because I noticed I had a text from her. She knows I like bagels. My mother in “love” had seen the explosion on the news and realized how close it was to my work so she called my wife.

I emailed my parents once I got off work to let them know I was safe also. My dad emailed back that he had heard about the explosion but hadn’t realized that I worked near there. My mom emailed back that she had heard about the explosion but was thinking it was pretty far away from my work. She knew where I worked though.