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"I was very lucky, I only lost a sweater," says Cheryl Deavers about the fire that wreaked havoc in the building that housed her office. She was surprised, however, when she arrived at work Monday morning: "I had ignored my answering machine and blithely came in to work. Imagine my shock when I saw the shell of the building and fire trucks around. Clusters of people [were] standing around and talking, naturally I joined the group trying ... [to figure out] 'What happened?'"

In terms of getting the office back to normal, the fire "really doubled the workload. We had to be up and running within a day. So setting up our disaster backup plan and ordering things was priority," says Deavers. As part of the plan, overtime was a necessity. "For over a month, we worked long hours just to regain our normal routine." Then Deavers admits, "It was good that we had a Thanksgiving and Christmas break. It helped us keep our sanity." But in the end, Deavers agrees with her co-workers, "Everyone pulled together in our office, as well as the whole department. It was definitely a superb team effort."