FIYAH!

We had some excitement on our block at 3:30am last Wednesday morning. It all started with a BANG, literally. The bang startled me. Growing up in the 'hood, my first thought was "gunshots"....until I smelled smoke (it was a couple of transformers that blew). We got out of bed and looked out the window and our eyeballs were greeted with bright oranges and yellows. Then we noticed the bright colors raining down on our car. And all we could do was watch. (it was too smokey and fiery to get pictures of that).

It didn't take long for the Fire Department to show up and begin battling the blaze. We continued watching the fire rain down on our car, hoping and praying the damage wouldn't be too terrible.

Look at the house across the street, the vinyl siding is melted. This was one HOT fire.

And that's our (old) car under the water hose.

Here we have the bulk of the damage to our car: scratches, gunk melted on, and stuff just melted.

A close up of the headlight...crazy!

This was at about 10-11am (approx. 7 hours after the fire started!) We still couldn't move our car, it was apart of a crime scene.

Here's what's left of the building. I couldn't get a shot before the boards went up. They had even replaced the pole by the time I got this shot, it was charred badly.

The fire was deliberately set and according to an eye witness the molotov cocktail went through the front door.

And this is the debris we must deal with as it has not been cleaned up. Since we've had two windy storms blow through our neighborhood, a lot of this stuff has ended up in our front and back yard.

The house was being used as an office building, so thankfully no one was inside. We really feel for the guy, he's a Pastor at a church across the street who works with troubles youths. However, this is the 3rd or 4th building he owns that has been set on fire, including the Church itself (maybe he tries to help pryomaniacs?). And that was only about a year ago. He has most recently purchased the house right next door to ours (the house between us and this building) and that makes me a little nervous.

Our house was filled with smoke for a good few hours, and filled with the smell of it for the next couple of days. Although we were approached by a sales guy advertising his company's services of carpet and uphosltery cleaning, all ambulance chaser like. I guess in this case you would call him a fire truck chaser.

Our new car no longer has that new car smell. We had it for a whole 2-1/2 weeks! We aired it out and bought an air freshener and now it smells like "beach scents". But, it being our first brand new car, I was hoping to have that smell for as long as possible (self absorbed much?)

On the "brighter side" we either get a car that'll look almost new, or get enough cash to buy a newer used car. And we got to meet a few more of the neighbors we hadn't met. Nothing like a raging neighborhood fire to bring the neighbors together eh?