Brainchild
September 24th, 2003, 10:47 PM
Last night there was a house-fire in my neighborhood. One block down and two houses over somebody was smoking in bed and the bed went up in flames.
My neighborhood is right in downtown Portland, OR. All the houses are about a hundred years old or older. Big old wood houses. Many of them have been tinder-dry for about 80 of those years. They are all ready to go...given a small bit of encouagement. The fire-houses are real close and quite busy in the winter.
Anyway, last night in the blink of an eye 5 fire trucks came rolling up with lights flashing and sirens screaming. (9 p.m. pdt). Firemen running around willy-nilly with hoses and oxygen tanks. Smoke was heavy.
At first I thought it was just another fire, but an old man got killed in this one. People from the building said he was downstairs cooking when the alarm guy ran through the building screaming “FIRE! GET OUT NOW!“
The odd thing was...the old guy didn’t leave the house with the other occupants...he ran up the stairs to his room at the top of the house. He got trapped up there and couldn’t get out.
I wonder what he went up there for? I went and looked at the remains of the house this morning and the entire upstairs was a burned out shell. I wonder if he had some cash under his matress, or he went to get his car keys, or some keepsake or memento.
That house had been rented to six different renters. If they would have been asleep...all of them may have been lost.
Yesterday I won a year’s supply of olive oil in a drawing at a pasta-shop. I was feeling pretty good about that.
My neighborhood is right in downtown Portland, OR. All the houses are about a hundred years old or older. Big old wood houses. Many of them have been tinder-dry for about 80 of those years. They are all ready to go...given a small bit of encouagement. The fire-houses are real close and quite busy in the winter.
Anyway, last night in the blink of an eye 5 fire trucks came rolling up with lights flashing and sirens screaming. (9 p.m. pdt). Firemen running around willy-nilly with hoses and oxygen tanks. Smoke was heavy.
At first I thought it was just another fire, but an old man got killed in this one. People from the building said he was downstairs cooking when the alarm guy ran through the building screaming “FIRE! GET OUT NOW!“
The odd thing was...the old guy didn’t leave the house with the other occupants...he ran up the stairs to his room at the top of the house. He got trapped up there and couldn’t get out.
I wonder what he went up there for? I went and looked at the remains of the house this morning and the entire upstairs was a burned out shell. I wonder if he had some cash under his matress, or he went to get his car keys, or some keepsake or memento.
That house had been rented to six different renters. If they would have been asleep...all of them may have been lost.
Yesterday I won a year’s supply of olive oil in a drawing at a pasta-shop. I was feeling pretty good about that.