Turn the Page

This happened two weeks ago.  It’s a reminder that while I work for a weekly newspaper, and should get photos whenever something big happens in town, sometimes it happens a little too close.

Before I go into full details, no one was injured in this accident.

Thursdays I usually get home early.  A late night of work Wednesday coupled with an early morning Thursday means I go home around 1 in the afternoon.  Sometimes I’ll write, sometimes I’ll do some housework.  On this day, I was watching some of my Star Trek Voyager DVDs.  Sometimes I’ll block out the outside sounds and just relax, other times I’ll end up napping on the couch (which isn’t good for my back).  So I don’t pay much attention to what’s going on around me.

On this day, it took me a while to realize the lights and sirens were right in front of my apartment.  Seriously, I live three blocks from the fire hall, so I hear them whenever they go out.  But on that day, they parked in front of my place.  Okay, not right in front.  Just a bit north to the apartment block beside mine.  There was smoke coming from one of the apartments.  As it turned out, someone left a pot on their stove and left the element on.  Then a bottle of oil fell over and poured onto the area.  Insta-fire!  The apartment dwellers happened to be downtown at the time.  Needless to say, that apartment had a lotta smoke and fire damage, and the neighbouring apartments had some smoke damage.

Since then, however, whenever I hear a smoke detector go off in my apartment block, I get a bit paranoid.