warm evening...

Last night around 7:30, I bagged up some recyclables (plastic bottles and newspapers) and opened the side door to put them on the porch. I thought, "wow - it's really warm out tonight" and came back inside to check the thermometer. 76 degrees...another 'wow!' - compared to the cool 70 inside the house. For the past 10 minutes or so, we had been hearing the fire alarms go off and the firetrucks driving down the street...but that wasn't too unsusual since the firehouse is right down the block. Then I saw the people...lots and lots of people - walking down the street past our house - like they were going to a fire! LOL! They were! We soon realized that the fire was literally next door (well, not quite...). We live on a hill and, about a block away at the bottom of the hill down in the flood zone of Montgomery, stood an old abandoned warehouse. It was an eyesore, school kids would hang out there, and all of us in town wondered when the place would be torn down. Well, somehow it caught fire last night (probably caused by a tossed cigarette from one of the kids) and the place became an inferno! Within minutes, the roof was engulfed in flames, the brick walls exploded and fell in a fiery crash, and Steve & I stood with our neighbors in the street as we watched this amazing phenomena. At one point, the flames reached higher than the plumes of smoke, and we could feel the heat on our faces. Miraculously, the breeze was blowing away from us so the smoke did not drift our way, and the firewall between the two connecting warehouses kept the fire in check. I have never witnessed a fire such as this...I was entranced...and I was caught up in the hypnotic attraction of such a huge catastrophe.