Another local company had a backup generator in the basement. They were doing maintenance work on the power and messed up so the generator kicked in. Since it was in the basement, they had a belt to drive an exhaust fan. Generator kicked on, fan belt snapped, exhaust filled the entire basement, rolled into the service elevator, starts coming out the 3rd floor (top of the service elevator) and the building was then evacuated.
Last generator story, small IT shop with a small colo in the 2000s moved into a new building and got a natural gas generator installed with it running a self diagnostic once a month. Power goes out in the first month, lights go out, generator kicks on, lights come back, lights go back off. Turns out that the electrician didn't have a 60amp breaker that day and put in a 20 amp breaker for a 60+ amp generator. They meant to come back out and fix it and never did.