More pics from Kingsbury
This was some kind of processing building. Who knows what was done, there. No trespassing signs everywhere, nothing but weeds, nobody;s been in the building for years.
But the building had a special feature. Two walkways left the up-stairs rooms via outswinging doors to two galvanized steel escape slides.
The bottom of the slides look like this
The escape slides were so direct and so carefully constructed that it could only mean one thing: People had died, and they had done this to prevent a recurrence- or at least provide an escape route. Today it would be done by robots- or waldos. THen, it was done by humans. The slides say “When X happens, get the FUCK OUT IN A GREAT BIG FUCKING HURRY”.
I wonder what X was.
10 comments Og | Uncategorized
Neato. Where was this?
Hey, no hand rails on those tubes, like the catwalks have. A guy can fall over the side in an escape. OSHA violation.
Probably an explosives place or some chemical manufacturing plant. The building looks like it could date from post-WW II to 1970’s.
The fact that they put catwalks out like that, instead of having the slides abut the building, says there must have been some serious f’ed up stuff to get away from, so here’s an extra 50 feet of run before you dive bomb to the parking lot.
My grade school had a covered chute much like that uncovered one for a fire escape. The nun used to throw a gallon of bleach down it once a week.
There’s an old converted schoolhouse on US 421 somewhere between Indianapolis and Logansport (yeah that’s a big stretch, but I always forget to mark it on the GPS when we go by) that has one of those. Years ago it was easy to see, now the foliage has grown up around it to the point where you can barely see where it exits the second floor.
We always figured that the kids who lived there used it as a slide when their parents weren’t home.
mts, the whole facility manufactured ammunition. Those slides are about three feet wide and the sides about four feet tall. Two skinny guys could slide down them at once.
Broad, this is about three quarters of the way to South Bend.
“mts, the whole facility manufactured ammunition.”
So basically, this was the emergency fire escape, it would seem.
The building also has a fire escape. This is apparently the “massive disaster” escape.
Yep, those were installed to allow personnel to avoid an impending blast.
If they had a few seconds warning anyway. It wouldn’t matter that close though. You’d be toast, literally, or at the bare minimum, guts and brains would be turned into a gooey, non-usable jello-like substance.
“gooey, non-usable jello-like substance. ”
You’re getting me all worked up again. Might have to put them purple socks back on.
I am gonna say, with a set up like that, it has to have been something out of the ordinary. Maybe they made something like artillery rockets or aircraft launched rockets there. The only reason I could imagine something like that would be in the case of a strong oxidizer getting lose and needing to get out before it reaches a fuel source and the place goes boom.
MunDane, that was sort of my idea too. Not the rocket thing, just that it was some special precaution.