Hurry, Hurry, Drive the Firetruck...

We were awakened last night by our doorbell ringing. I could see the hallway was orange from light outside, and knew something was wrong. Boy is that an understatement. The police officer at our door was requesting us to move our car in case the wall fell down of this old mill that is just across the street. The wall did not fall, but boy did this old building take a hit. It was fascinating and sickening all at once. I had gotten to know it because it's the first thing you see driving down our street to our house, and I used to drive past it on my way to my sister's before she moved. And recently, it's what I had to look at while doing the dishes and making dinner. I felt like I was watching an old friend.

Here it is before the firefighters got things set up and going.

This first douse basically put out the big flame you can see. The back end was stubborn, and didn't go out for a very long time.

The roof is mostly gone.

The pressure coming out of the bucket hose was incredible. You can also see water coming out the bottom of the bucket, keeping things cool underneath.

So we were up from about 2:30 to 3:30 while it was put out, then tried to sleep, although it was still very noisy and our eyes were burning from being outside with the smoke. We got the boys up to see it for a minute, and the girls slept right through it, even though their window faces the street. There's been a lot of activity today, and I had to fill out a witness statement. I've been around two other close fires. One while on my mission we were teaching 'Crazy Renee' and her neighbors garage burned up. Then when we lived in San Diego the hill behind our home burned up (VERY SCARY!) and they used our driveway to do the news broadcasts. Ice Plant saved the day in that case.