It took a long time to get home after class finished at 5 o'clock this evening. I was planning to take Canada Way all the way into downtown New Westminster. It's called Eighth Street in our city's limits. I got into uptown and found police preventing traffic from going anywhere near the high school. Other than keeping all traffic from travelling on the near roads, they were not directing or re-routing traffic. After turning onto a side screen and being stuck for fifteen minutes, I did a U-turn and nearly doubled my route by going back up to Edmonds and down Kingsway, which becomes Twelfth Street in town. When I was stuck in the lines, cars going in the other direction were facing similar problems. One guy in a small car next to me asked if I'd heard what happened. He said he'd heard others talking about a high-school shooting.
I got home in about an hour whereas it usually takes about twenty minutes. The scary thing is realizing the impossibility of an evacuation by automobile. In the movies, generally people get out of town after a disaster. I realize how it'd be necessary to just leave the vehicle in the street and attempt to escape on foot.
I was home too late to catch any information on the news. I had to look on the Internet. At the present moment it seems as if the school is under lock-down just because someone maintained that they had seen a gun man. I guess everyone is erring on the side of caution. Although that's not good news, it's a damn sight better than finding out people had actually died from gunshot wounds.
