jeffcovey.net -- 220 north carey street fire, 04/27/2001

i woke up a little after five this morning and was going to go back to bed for a little while, but i heard a humming sound that made me think my furnace was about to explode. i stumbled down the hallway and saw flashing lights, and got to my front windows and saw what looked like every firetruck in the city parked in front of my house.

220, one of the seven abandoned houses on the west side of my block, was on fire; i don't know how long they'd been there fighting it (i must sleep pretty soundly), but they were done with the worst by the time i became aware of it. it looks as though no one was hurt, and if one of them had to go up, you really couldn't pick a better one, as 216, 218, 222^[1], and 224 are also abandoned, and provided a buffer. if it had been 224, it could have been much worse, since mr. butler in 226 doesn't get around very well or very quickly.

^[1] i think everyone's been out of here for a while.

click on any photo to see a larger version of it.
	looked like a fireman's convention out there. my original count was that there were 9 firetrucks, 3 ambulances, 5 police cars, and 2 jeeps within easy view (and i wasn't leaning too far out the window, being, you know, not dressed and stuff), but i later saw that one of the vehicles which i thought was an ambulance was labeled "box 414^[1] associate fire police special services unit", and had a table with coffee and donuts in front of it; that's what they were all standing around. i guess the main attraction was over by the time i woke up. ^[1] actually, "box" doesn't make much sense to me, but that's what i wrote down. shrug comments (0)
	here's my first attempt to get a shot of the house in question. still too dark for my camera to show much, but the spotlight helped some. comments (0)
	i was trying to get a shot of the two ladders here. comments (0)
	looking down at the two ladder trucks. firemen walking up and down the street. comments (0)
	looking south. the whole block was filled with two rows of trucks. comments (0)
	looking north, you can see that the trucks that wouldn't fit into this block spilled over into the next ones. comments (0)
	ok, i ought to just accept that i'm not going to be able to show much in this light... comments (0)
	but let's try one more shot of the street. comments (0)
	ok, there's finally enough light that i can get that shot of the two ladders. comments (0)
	better still, firemen on the roof! at first, i thought one of them was using a flame thrower, which didn't make a great deal of sense, then i realized i was seeing the water from his hose shining through the spotlight. comments (0)
	another shot of the three of them. comments (0)
	ok, now you can make out the street a little better. comments (0)
	and the donut crowd is starting to move around a bit. comments (0)
	ah, much better. comments (0)
	they kept that stretcher ready, but luckily didn't have to use it. you can see a couple of the smaller ladders leaning against the house. comments (0)
	and there it is. comments (0)
	the aftermath. someone came and stapled "condemned" signs on 220 and the two houses on the right and the two houses on the left of it. maybe this time they'll tear the damn things down instead of just nailing plywood to them. an open field there would make a nice playground for the neighborhood kids, especially the ones from linda's day care. comments (0)
	one last shot. comments (0)
	i walked around to the back of 220 to see how it looked. comments (0)
	let's all be grateful for bricks. if it had been a row of wooden houses, i would have been taking photos of the new view from my house to calhoun. comments (0)
	220's backyard, such as it is. comments (0)
	220 and 222. comments (0)