Tuesday afternoon, I heard a siren. I thought briefly about getting up and looking out the window, but I was in the middle of something and it didn't last long. Deciding that it was on the freeway, I went back to what I was doing.
A while later, I went out to get the mail. And saw 7 fire trucks and assorted police vehicles blocking the street!
Yes, that siren I heard was from a fire truck. I'm assuming the other emergency vehicles didn't run their sirens because I would have gotten up and checked what was going on if I heard multiple sirens wailing. Even I couldn't get that involved with something. I think.
A neighbor across the street and a few houses down had a fire in their house. It's unclear if someone called the fire department or if some alarm system sent the alert, but from what I heard, the woman put something on the stove and took the dog for a walk. Yeah. No offense meant, not even to the woman who did this, but are you kidding me? I hate cooking and quickly get bored. I'm notorious for putting something on the stove and wandering into another room. I've burned more than one attempt at edible food, but I've never been more than a room away when something was cooking. This just seems like common sense.
The family was lucky--no one was in the house when the fire started so nobody was injured. Since it took 7 fire trucks, I'm assuming the interior damage was severe, but I didn't see anything on the outside of the house. Of course, I didn't walk down to get a closer look, so who knows?
The police had the street blocked off so that no one could get through. One neighbor had to park his car on the street and walk to his house. This guy's wife is a flight attendant and a coworker was picking her up. A police officer ended up carrying her luggage for her and they walked to where the driver was waiting. When I went for the mail, I saw more neighbors out in their front yards than I've seen all summer. Everyone was checking out what was going on.
One troubling piece of information from the fire is that the fire hydrant (which happened to be one house away from the house on fire) didn't work. They had to truck water in to fight the fire. Awesome. Hopefully, this will get that hydrant fixed and maybe get a few others checked.
This is more excitement than we've had on the block since a neighbor had his car stolen out of his driveway a few years ago.
