Fire

Yesterday morning I was taking a coffee break with some co-workers, and looking out our fourth-floor window we noticed a column of black smoke rising in the near distance, just across I-10 in Mid-City. Good God, could that be our house?

I rode my bike over and discovered the fire was quite some distance from our house. It was on the 3800 block of D’Hemecourt, near South Cortez. I could see flames shooting up a couple blocks away. Five or six houses were burning. It was a terrible thing to behold. I took some pictures, and a couple short videos, but when I got back to my office I discovered all the files were corrupted:

It turns out that Karen was also there, and she took some pictures:

I returned to the scene after lunch. The last fire truck was just leaving. Residents were milling about in a state of shock. One house burned right to the ground.

Firefighters say they’re at the breaking point.

That evening, I gave Walter a ride home on the way to a meeting. Turns out he lives just one or two doors down from the houses that burned. I found that kind of eerie.