I work at a hotel in the restaurant and we had a private party going on tonight for 12 people and a little after they arrived the power went out. So that means only emergency lights and no vents in the kitchen, manager on duty decides to still have the kitchen cook the private party's order.
Now this is not a well ventilated kitchen at the best of times but when the electric hood vent isn't working its abysmal, before they even started cooking the kitchen was already getting very hot and you could see the air in the emergency lights because of the gas in the air, naturally once they started cooking multiple steaks and other things the kitchen began getting very smoky. I and a couple other coworkers were trying to fan the room out with sheet trays to make it somewhat possible to breathe, people were coughing and crying from the smoke, and the fire alarm even went off
Multiple coworkers have videos of how intensely smoky it got and us trying to fan out the room. The manager did not expressly forbid anyone from leaving nor did anyone try to leave and get stopped however I am wondering if, even though Noone was expressly forbidden to leave would this still be a violation of osha? I do not intend to file a report or anything like that but do I have sufficient evidence to use the threat of reporting it to get managers in line? Or should I keep my nose down. In Colorado by the way