More excitment than I needed!

[brigdh]

Just after I made that last post, I heard a boom outside, and went to the window to see what it was. A parked car just outside my building had exploded. Or caught on fire. Or something. I called 911 to let them know what was happening (and, by the way, calling 911 in New York is insanely complicated), and hung out at the window, watching the flames and smoke and the fire trucks arrive.

For some reason, the firefighters couldn't or wouldn't actually put out the fire, so the car continued to burn with big orange flames and dark, billowing smoke and occasional additional booms when gasoline or something exploded. After a while I noticed that there was now so much smoke that I couldn't see anything out of the windows, just thick gray clouds and everything smelled like burning oil. I could still hear, however, and managed to catch someone telling the bystanders to back off, because it was unsafe to be breathing this.

So I decided to throw some things in a bag and flee to a coffeeshop for a few hours, despite that I'd not been planning on venturing out into the massive rain. Just as well, I suppose, as in leaving my building I found it had been surrounded by something that looked like police tape, except it was red instead of yellow and had DANGER written on it.

Well. That's interesting. And just when my apartment had stopped smelling like burnt duck.

Comments

[rm.livejournal.com]

Car fires are politically dangerous because they can be electrical and chemical in nature and water is not always the best thing. Usually they just stand there and keep people away from it while letting it burn out. I wonder what set it off.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ah, that makes sense.

But me too, since there wasn't anyone in it at the time, and it had presumably been sitting there for a while.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Maybe someone thought really hard at it.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ha! Maybe some hated it (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/04/09). Or perhaps we have scary government-experimented little girls living in the building.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

One of my friends had his car destroyed in a car fire when a drunk guy pulled into the parking space next to my friend's car and passed out with his foot on the gas (yes, the guy died).

That happened on a Friday night. My friend, who didn't leave his apartment all weekend and had parked a couple of buildings away, didn't find out until Monday morning on his way to work, because the apartment complex didn't see fit to track him down and inform him.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's terrible. I mean, bad enough to lose your car in a way that involved someone's death, but it would be especially horrible to deal with it a few days later while you're trying to go to work. Poor your friend!

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

damn.