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October 2008
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What's an "evacuation?"

1:07 PM Fri, Oct 17, 2008 |

We all know what an evacuation is. Or do we? I covered a fire at a building on the Barnes Jewish Hospital campus in St. Peters Friday. It was a building under construction. The fire did not spread to where patients were and no one was hurt.

However, because of smoke getting in to the adjacent building which housed a maternity ward on the third floor, five patients were moved down one floor for several hours. No one was forced to leave the building.

Apparently our anchors were calling this an evacuation on our morning show. A hospital official called the newsroom to correct them. Then someone gave her my cell phone and she called and specifically told me "this was not an evacuation."

I told her, that's fine, I'll just report how the patients were moved down a floor.

When my colleague Robin Smith tossed to me for my live report at noon she said twice, there was an "evacuation" at the hospital.

I corrected her on air (which of course no anchor appreciates).

We had a very respectful discussion back at the station. Turns out she looked up the word "evacuation" in the dictionary and it says, "to remove from a place or area." By that definition, there was indeed an evacuation at the hospital.

Guess the hospital official was mistaken, as was I for taking her word for it.

I am now going to evacuate from this computer and head home.




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