Distracted by Air » photography

three blocks from my apartment

April 2, 2008 5:00 am

There was a fire last night. Now, we heard sirens, but thought nothing of them, because the street running on one side of our building is the street one of the fire stations uses often. Since it was warm (relatively, as in, 60 degrees) yesterday, we had the windows open.

I smell smoke. There’s different kinds of smoke, as I’m sure you all know. Charcoal smoke, cigarette smoke, campfire smoke, etc. Then there’s housefire smoke. That’s what we smelled. Since it was strong, we went outside to investigate. Que the ‘holy shit’ moment at seeing flames beyond the buildings next to ours. Something to note: flames are often more far away than they appear. As in, we thought it was just a couple houses over, not three blocks. Walking outside again, we get this view from just across our street.
Of course, that photo was taken before the billowing smoke really got ahold of the neighborhood. That part wasn’t long in coming, that’s for sure.

The smoke was so thick in the neighborhood that you had trouble seeing what houses were what and what street you were on. A fog of smoke, really.

Nathan also insisted that we broke a cardinal rule of suspense/horror movies by going toward the scene of shit going down. I explained that it wasn’t aliens or UFO’s or mysterious holes in the ground. He didn’t buy it.

But I don’t think firefighters look like aliens, not in the least.

Though, apparently, the lights on the ladders and trucks they use could be construed as alien-like in origin.

According to Nathan.

Not me.

The Union Leader has an ongoing story about the fire at their website.