The following is a memo sent out to City of Seattle employees. It has not been edited.

M E M O R A N D U M

DATE:June 9, 2007

TO:Employees at Civic Center Buildings

FROM:FFD Facility Operations Division

RE:Burnt Microwave Popcorn and Building Evacuations

At our Civic Center buildings we continue to see a high number of instances of employees burning microwave popcorn and triggering the building smoke alarms. This is a serious issue which requires Fire Department emergency response, building evacuation, and resetting of building systems. Each evacuation causes disruption to City services for at least 30-40 minutes and has considerable actual costs to the City. It also poses safety and security issues, especially at the Justice Center which includes jail facilities and active courtrooms.

In May, we had the most recent building evacuation at the Justice Center due to burnt microwave popcorn. This is the eighth time in less than three years that we had to evacuate 400+ persons from Justice Center due to burnt popcorn. We have also had multiple evacuations of 300+ persons at City Hall and Seattle Municipal Tower due to burnt popcorn.

If this problem continues, it will result in a ban of all microwave popcorn in downtown City buildings, as some other downtown buildings have done.

We would like your help in eliminating these alarms due to burnt microwave popcorn, so we dont have to ban it. Please read and follow package instructions. Stay by the microwave and listen to the pop, to know when to stop.

Thank you for your cooperation.