One Saturday I was in the lab at my desk doing something when I heard a rather large BANG! There was an undergrad in the lab at the time, it was summer, and he had been studying and then getting up to check a distillation he was doing. This time he checked and had forgotten to wear his safety glasses and the distillation exploded sending glass everywhere, including cutting up his face. He had a piece of glass lodged in his eye in fact, and the hood was somehow glowing and on fire. I rushed over and pushed him under the safety shower to get the chemicals off him. I had a brand new lab coat which was clean, unusually, and put that around him and grabbed some dry powder fire extinguishers to put out the fire. The fume hood was a mess and there was glass all over the floor, along with water and bloody rags I had used to wipe him down a bit, powder from the extinguishers and two dead extinguishers. I recall it was chilly outside, so I got him downstairs and into my car to take him to the ER about 4 blocks away when he held his arms out and said “My arms are burning” so I did a Blue’s Brothers kind of “hit it” and that 350 roared as I ran through a stoplight and kicked it to the hospital.
In my mirror I noticed a campus police car receding into the distance but flicking on his lights. Traffic was very light. I pulled into the ER area and tried to get my car out of the way, put on my flashers and left the doors open as I got him inside. I had to explain what had happened and they took him to the back, and after a few minutes a nurse came out and said “Was he exposed to an acid or a base?”. I tried to explain that the reaction he was running was neither, but it was a powerful oxidizing agent. She left, puzzled, and then another nurse came out and we had the same conversation, and then in a bit the doctor came out and asked me the same question, and I tried to explain, but it had been a long time since he had had organic chemistry. He told me they were washing him in a bath with bicarbonate and would that be OK, and I said “Yeah, fine, just use a lot of water, and how’s his eye?“ The doc said it needed stitches but it would be OK.
I said I needed to move my car and he said fine. I walked outside to find three campus police cars and 5 campus police, one of whom had his ticket book out and his foot propped on my rear bumper writing. I figured this would be not good. He looked up at me and said “Is this your car?” and I replied “Yes, Sir” and he said “What is your hurry?”. I almost said “I was going to a fire” but I nipped my sarcasm in the nick of time and told him the situation. He straightened up and said “Well, next time this happens call us and let us take care of it.” I of course said I would and he put his ticket book away. Calling these bozos to find us up on the sixth floor of Kenan lab would have taken time we did not have, but I was not going to argue if he would let me off, and he did. I headed back to the lab maybe three hours later after taking the "kid" home.
OK, so now I need to call the boss. I park, legally, on Saturday, and go inside. By now it is past noon and other people have come into the lab and I find outside the open door to the lab that I left open a crowd of grad students clustered looking inside. Now, get the imagery of the lab: One hood is pretty well demolished, broken glassware is everywhere, there is water all over the floor along with fire extinguisher powder and two dead fire extinguishers, several bloody rags, and a general mess. One of the others sees me and asks if I know what happened and I say I do. I guess they were afraid there was a dead body inside somewhere. I get through the crowd and into the lab and call Slayton on the phone and explain what happened. He was not happy. By then another professor had shown up and wanted an explanation and in half an hour Slayton showed up as I was cleaning the place up some. He asked about the student, who turned out to be just fine, so it all was more or less resolved, though we took some further precautions when doing that particular distillation in the future. That student was back in the lab on Monday doing the same reaction again in fact. I thought he was crazy.
