A fire on the Vermont campus on Thursday forced the building to be evacuated and employees to be sent home early.
National Life closed for the day at roughly 4:20 p.m. We evacuated the building at 3:15 p.m. The Deane C. Davis Building, where state employees work, was not evacuated because that building was isolated from the fire. Roughly 1,000 people were evacuated.
There was a fire in our bio-mass boiler in our basement. It was contained to that unit. It activated sprinklers and required a response by area fire departments. Authorities report it has been contained.
A separate oil-fired boiler was not affected and is operational. Therefore, National Life was scheduled to be open for business on Friday. Our business operations were transferred to our Texas offices and continued largely uninterrupted.
Public safety officials responded quickly and National Life is grateful to both police and fire officials for their assistance.