The neighboring apartment building caught on fire last night. I woke up hearing some oscillating beeping sounds and was trying to figure out if they were car alarms or just ringing in my ears. Then I heard a woman yell “Oh my god!” which was enough for me to wake up and take a look outside. I could see from my window flames were pouring out of a window from an apartment building that faced the back of our house. After waking up Cein and making sure the dog was okay. I grabbed a ladder  so I could be on top of our garage and get close enough to spray water in with our garden hose. The water from the garden hose caused things inside the apartment to crack and pop but the flames inside were too big to be affected.  Standing there in my underwear and feeling the heat of the fire, I was the one that neighbors in the building started talking to. A pair of women with a child told me they were trapped in their apartment. I told them “The Fire Department has been called. They are on their way. You’re going to be okay.” The fire was in the apartment next to theirs and I could see black smoke billowing out of the room that separated their apartments. I switched the hose to that room, thinking it might be more important to delay the fire’s spread since I couldn’t expect to stop what was already burning. Another resident of the apartment building brought the fire hose from his hall out to his balcony underneath and to the side of the building on fire but didn’t have time to turn it on before the Fire Department showed. As the fire department worked I gave Cein a hug and waited until the fire was more contained  to snap a few pictures from our dining room window.

I’m quite certain that my sheepishness at exploiting the pain of others for my own artistic gain kept me from taking better photos that these.