Fired Up

Last Thursday I was in the front room of our house, and I heard sirens. Getting closer. I sat up and looked out, and up our street came a couple of fire trucks. Hmmm, that doesn't happen very often, and it's always troubling when there's an actual fire going on up here. Of course, fire trucks don't always mean there's a fire, but not too much longer, here comes another pair of fire trucks. Shortly after, another vehicle, the size of a fire truck, but more boxlike with "Urban Search & Rescue" on the side.

None of this sounded good as far as there actually being a fire, and sometime in there, a fire helicopter joined the party. Instead of having a spotlight, it had forward facing lights, and when it circled towards us, you could see billowing smoke. Fortunately, while the area surrounding us were experiencing high winds, it has been calm in our area, so no red flag days for us.

I was curious, and was considering trying to walk to where it was going on, but never did. Fell asleep before the news came on that night, but caught it the next day.

A six room,9,100 square foot house. 10 to 15 people living there. The house was apparently in foreclosure. I've walked by the place before, I remember admiring the octagon turrets. Might even have actual pictures of the place on the hard drive from my old Toshiba laptop. The before pictures are from Google Street View.

After I got home from work on Saturday, the younger and I went over to see what we could see. The street does a loop around, with houses on each end and a wide dirt trail on an undeveloped side of the hill with the namesake Sea View. Not knowing exactly which end of the street it was on, we figured it out in a hurry. Two days later, the street is still blocked off with a lot of the fire trucks, and a mobile command center on the opposite side (which is the same style of vehicle that the Urban Search and Rescue had). Parking enforcement was there, guarding the end. Asked if the street was blocked to pedestrian traffic as well as vehicles, and was answered in the affirmative. I asked how we were supposed to rubberneck then???

We walked back, and took off down the next street over, a dead end that has something of a view across the canyon, and it turns out we were able to see a good amount of the property from there.

Unfortunately, there's one person unaccounted for, an 84 year old man. One story I read said he went back in for a litter of puppies. An old guy died last time there was a structure fire up here, too.

Last stories I read, they still hadn't determined the cause. I'd speculate that with that many people, someone may have been using a hot plate in their room. Could be a smoker, too, or some other reason for all I know.