Fire

Awake at 0630, sat reading comics, at some point heard a fire alarm going off. Some wearied part of me assumed it was a false alarm, after so many in barracks and apartment buildings. Finally got up to look, and a guy is running in front of the Hostel/halfway house across the street. Smoke billowing from the roof. He called out to someone to call 911.




Within a minutes I could hear sirens. We are just a couple of blocks from a fire station, and they arrived very quickly.

Soon, at least ten fire trucks have the block filled, with other official vehicles present, a police cruiser stopping casual traffic.



Within an hour, the smoke is a mere whisp, and my neighbor comes out having missed most of the excitement. (Stayed up late to watch the local big game.) She's incredibly knowledgable, though, and tells me that no one was living there. It was about to undergo renovations to be a halfway house, not yet occupied. Could be anything, likely a squatter, possibly an electrical problem. She'd also worked for the Red Cross, rehousing people, and tells me these old places, the plaster walls have to be ripped out, as they just keep burning, and the house is often unsalvageable. Maybe, since it was being renovated anyway, they can keep the brick shell and rebuild the inside. I didn't see any ambulances leaving, so hopefully, it was in fact uninhabited.

Amazing how many people had cameras, though. From simple phone cameras to real rigs with large lenses.





The apartment building next door had the best, and possibly most scary view. The block west got most of the nasty smoke, though. Winds kept it away from us.

Update: Electrical, and no one was hurt.