When I first saw the smoke I was walking Jasper about 1 a.m. around 26th St. and Larkin. At first, I thought it was the DMV on fire, and I shouted at one of the security guards that walk the complex that his place was on fire, and he shouted back that no one had radioed him about it.
As it turned out, the fire was farther away, but where? Was it the Catholic Diocese? No. Was it Shoki Ramen? (I had heard that they will be closing soon.) No. Was it the Avid Reader? No. Instead, it was the new apartments, not yet completed. All that exposed wood! So flammable!
I ran back home, grabbed my iPhone, and put Jasper away. From my house, the fire looked alarming.
So many fire engines! And they can't get close to the fire!
The light-rail, truck-on-rails guy monitors a very bad situation.
These extraordinarily tall ladders were the only effective available tool to tackle the flames, and they weren't all that good, because the closely-packed apartment walls helped keep the water from reaching many flames.
Millions of dollars of new construction, gone, in half an hour!
These fire fighters parked at the Avid Reader bookstore, used powerful rotary saws to slice through chain link fences in showers of sparks, and dragged their hoses across the train tracks to try an reach the flames.
It looks like War of the Worlds!
