Fire

I was driving Cal to preschool a few days ago, and as I pulled out of the school driveway, I saw a huge plume of brown smoke rising into the air. I thought, "That's funny, it looks like it's coming from over where I live." But really, I was more than a mile away. I must be imagining that, right?

Wrong.

I know you can't tell from these pictures, but there were probably 13 service vehicles blocking off the different streets around our apartment complex. I tried telling the policeman that my poor helpless husband was upstairs in the shower, and that he listens to loud music and probably wouldn't have heard any calls to evacuate, but he gave me a gruff signal to turn around, so I did...

 ...and then I snuck in a different way using backstreets and a discreet underground parking entrance.

 Lucky for us (and unlucky for others, sadly), the fire didn't affect our specific building. But it did burn the one next to it (the building you see over to the right in the photo above, which I took from our front porch area).

Thankfully, no one was hurt, but the fire spread through four separate units before they were able to put it out. We walked over with Cal that night to check out the damage:

They're not sure how it started, but it seems to have originated on the general manager's balcony. (Insurance fraud, anyone??? Sorry, too much Law and Order.)

We're thankful to be safe and sound! Scary!