Some coyotes woke us up last night. They were yapping away like drunk teenagers. This is nothing unusual–they wake us up at least once a week. At the same time, there was a siren, followed by more sirens and a lot of banging noises. The sirens are not all that unusual; there’s a fire department just up the road, and there’s a huge residential area served by the road just outside our apartment. The banging was unusual, and the noise of a helicopter circling over head finally prompted me to look outside the window.

“Uhh, Jonah, there’s a big fire out there.”

Jonah got up and got very excited, and decided that we should go investigate. I wasn’t inclined to get yelled at by cops at 3am, but decided that since there was no way I was going back to sleep, we might as well. I put on some clothes, and we started walking up the street. They were evacuating the apartment complexes just up the street and across the road from us. The cops were banging on doors, telling folks to get out. Dozens of people were standing around in pajamas, with blankets and their pets.

We stayed out of the way, and watched the blaze appear to get larger, rather than smaller, despite the half-dozen fire trucks who’d tapped every hydrant in sight. They finally started making progress after they got a huge ladder truck set up. The explosions continued; who knows what that was. Parts of the building falling, cars burning, and natural gas meters blowing up, probably. After it looked like they’d gotten it mostly contained, we went back to bed.

No one’s speculated about the cause of the fire yet. It destroyed 8 apartments and burned 10 cars. Everyone appears to have escaped uninjured, though there’s still one person unaccounted for.

The road was still closed at 10am this morning, and we had to drive all around the back side of the neighborhood to figure out how to get out. By noon, they’d opened 3 of the roads at the Rockrimmon/Delmonico intersection, but one side of Rockrimmon is still closed.

The police have a couple of RV’s set up in the road. I’m not sure why the police need RV’s. Donut storage and coffee production? The fire department still has quite a few trucks out there, as the fire is still smoldering, though they’ve finally stopped watering it.

I thought Jonah said she was getting the camera last night, but it turns out she was asking me to get it. So we didn’t have it. But, the local news seems to have captured some pictures.