The nervous people were the telephone workers inside the building, presumably not experts. By having having his own wife and child inside the building, the resp

The nervous people were the telephone workers inside the building, presumably not experts. By having having his own wife and child inside the building, the responsible engineer puts his money where his mouth is, so to speak. This is similar to the Chinese government ordering airline executives to be on a flight on new year's eve Y2K, so they won't cut corners to save money or whatever to make the fixes required.