Excitement

Last Friday, while Shawn was at the airport getting someone “special” out of the country and on his merry way, there was excitement in our neighborhood.

It all started mid-afternoon when I started smelling smoke. And not the usual, someone is standing right outside our apartment chain-smoking smoke, but more of a something is seriously on fire smoke. After verifying that the smell was not coming from our building, I assumed that it was probably just a dumpster fire. But then I looked outside and saw that the air seemed to be pretty full of smoke. And then I heard sirens, which (oddly enough) is not a common occurrence here, despite the fact that we live a block away from a fire station. So it was time for Laika and I to investigate.

By the time we got outside, the air was so full of smoke that it looked like a dense fog had rolled in. Not really having any idea where the fire was at, we picked a random direction and started heading around the block. About halfway around, we heard two explosions. Not huge ones, but big enough to be called explosions. Finally, about three-quarters of the way around the block, we found our first fire truck. And our first fire fighter who looked totally calm as he jotted a few notes on his clipboard. So I assumed the fire was over and he was working on his report. As we turned to where I could see another fire truck, I realized that guy was maybe just trying to get out of doing any actual fire fighting because the fire was in no way over.

I finally got to about half a block away from the building that must have been totally engulfed in flames by this point (I couldn’t actually see it as it was set off the street through a gate) and found two more fire trucks. And some serious smoke pouring into the sky. Mind you, I think I could have totally just walked up to the site of the fire since there was no one doing any sort of crowd control, but I decided to play it safe and stay where I was.

Which was good, because at that point I got to see a fire fighter running down the street toward the fire carrying buckets of water. I kid you not. Buckets. Of water.

That explains so many things.

I headed back home then because, really, it wasn’t going to get any better than that. But I went out a few hours later and got this picture of one of the fire trucks.

I wanted to get a picture of the actual building that burned down, but a day later they had it all locked off so that no one could get to it. Since I had kind of expected to see children playing in the smoldering ruins, I was pretty shocked by the attempt at security. Next time I’ll know to just run up and take the shot while they’re throwing the buckets of water on the fire.