lola

This year's birthday was definitely the strangest yet. At about 2:45am on Friday the 8th, I was woken up by a bunch of sirens...I looked out the back window and thought "huh, it's not supposed to be that light out during the night," and then noticed a reflection in a window across the street of a GIANT FUCKING FIREBALL!!! I woke up the boy and we both got dressed and went outside...and witnessed the largest fire in SF since 2002 which was right behind our apartment building. I was totally blown away -- I mean, I've never seen anything like it before: a bunch of apartment buildings shooting flames 30 feet in the air and smoke and chaos and whatnot. I ended up going back to my apartment to get my camcorder and taping about 45 minutes of the fire. I felt a little guilty while I was filming, because I was really concerned about everyone getting out okay. Luckily I found out Friday afternoon that no one was killed and there were only 6 minor injuries. Even all the pets were rescued. OMG I think firefighters are so amazingly cool!!! The SF Chronicle story is here.

Here's some stills from the video I shot:






nightvision!

and these are shots from the next morning (7/9):


this is the back of the buildings, the part that faces our apartment


this is the front of the buildings - not as much damage so I'm pretty sure the fire started in the back