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.