The Beijing Rain Storm

So Thursday night, June 21st, there was a huge storm in Beijing.  It
flooded some of the roads, and even required that subways be closed
down.  It made the world news if you are interested.  The storm hit at
around 5:30pm that afternoon.  I was still at work, but probably 80%
of the other employees had already gone home for the day.  At first it
was just like any other storm, but then the rain came extremely heavy,
and extremely quick.  The few of us that were left in the office, were
standing by the windows watching the rain pound down.  We then noticed
that the windows behind us (the ones looking into the shop-floor) also
had rain pouring down them as well.  This is indoors, and is not
usually a good sign.  A few of us ran through the double doors into
the shop floor, having to pass through a literal waterfall in order to
do so.  The water was pouring in through the seam connecting the front
office and the shopfloor.  From there, it was rushing towards all of
our production lines and equipment.  The other manager's and I
frantically ran through the whole factory telling workers to get all
of the valuable machinery and parts off the ground, in case the water
passed by their workstation.  We then immediately started killing
power to everything that might cause electrical damage.   Once we had
eliminated any immediate danger, we started having the employees
(using brooms and boxes and whatever else we could find) steer the
water through drains and double doors back outside.  After this, we
went back into the front office, only to realize that the front seam
of the building (office side) had had a similar problem, and was
leaking inside the office.  Water had poured into the ceiling, making
the ceiling tiles fall left and right above our heads.  We grabbed
hard hats from the warehouse, and started checking for high-risk
areas.  The servers (which control our SAP system for all of China)
were one of those risks.  We looked into the server room, and saw
water dropping all around and on top of the servers.  However, the
doors are magnetically locked, and cannot be opened without the proper
badge.  No one in the plant had this type of badge.  We called someone
who did, and they braved the storm to come open the doors for us.  We
started wiping down the servers, and covering them with whatever we
could find to protect them from any further damage.  This all went on
for the rest of the night.  I was fortunate enough to be able to leave
around 9pm, but I know that some of the team worked all through the
night, and then a second crew came in the next morning.  In fact, I am
writing this on Wed the 29th, and we are no where near back to normal.
 Everyone is now working, and production has resumed, but there is
water damage all around us.
-JASON