Fire!

A little after 5 PM yesterday, Harper walked into the kitchen and said, "look at the smoke, there's a fire."

I was in the hallway, and replied with something along the lines of "I am a grumpy little man, who will never see the magic in life unless prompted. If it were not for you, I would be empty and afraid, and I am grateful every day--every single day--that you are in my life. I do not deserve you. I love you. At the moment, however, I am busy looking through my toolbox for an item which I shall later forget; I will be there shortly to view it for myself."

We live on a hill, and see lots of fires. Or lots of smoke plumes at least. And for perhaps 30 seconds or so, although I wanted to go look, I wasn't captivated. I wasn't intrigued. Merely curious to look, and wondering, slightly, if it had something to do with this freakish 78-degree heat wave. And then Harper said "I see flames."

Which was weird because: seen a lot of fires, never seen no flames.  And so then, expecting them to die out at any moment, I ran in. Captivated. Intrigued.

Where?

There, through the trees, towards the bridge.

I see smoke...

There.

I don't see... I see smoke...

There.

I only see... Holy shit! That's a huge fire!

And at that point we went out the back door, which opens directly to the roof of the apartment below us. There was a massive fire just across the Panhandle. We could see a huge orange bolt of flame through the trees of the park. There were no sirens. None.

I called 911, and after holding for a few minutes, they told me they knew about the fire and were on the way. So were we.

I've never seen a house fire before. It was the most horrifying block party I've ever been to. There were people all over the sidewalks. (It also struck me  how damned hip everyone in that neighborhood is. I remember when I used to live there, just a block from the fire, I thought that the folks who lived in the Haight were lame-os and the real Bohos lived in the Western Addition.) Police cars and fire trucks everywhere. At at a house adjascent to the corner of Central and McAllister, there was a fire on a roof.

We watched for half an hour, as the flames jumped to another roof, and two homes were devastated by fire, while another was at least badly damaged while five buildings in all were damaged. I saw what I took to be, from my experience sitting on my ass watching DVDs, a backdraft, as one window in a home suddenly lit up in an enormous fireball, causing the crowd to gasp. What amazed me the most was realizing, suddenly, that the water was coming from inside the house. Meaning that there were people in there, in that inferno, pumping water to save homes. Courage.

Eventually they got it settled, but before the roofs burned off of two buildings. It was horribly, profoundly, sad. I couldn't quit thinking how terrible it would be to come home from work and find your home burned up, all your possessions gone.