Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Trailer fire

At 2:45 AM, our dogs all stood straight up and started howling. Soon we humans could hear the sirens, too. It wasn't just a cop pulling someone over in our driveway (which they're fond of doing in the middle of the night, for some reason). It was a convergence of several types of sirens. Some of them we recognized from the s.o.'s days as a volunteer fireman.

"Are you getting up to look?" the s.o. asked me groggily. He had returned from a poker game only an hour before, and had probably only just descended into REM sleep when the noise commenced.

"Mm," I replied. I fumbled for my glasses, clapped them onto my face, and shuffled across the room to the front window. I crouched down and stared through the leaves of our umbrella plant at the flashing lights across the street.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust, and then suddenly I exclaimed, "Holy shit, the old trailer next to Eddie Lee's is on fire! I mean REALLY on fire!" The flames reached 20 feet in the air, bright as daylight.

Today I went over to look at the remains of the trailer. I wasn't the only gawker; a man and his son had pulled up their pickup truck to peer at the shell of the structure. This is what we saw:



Probably an arson. Or so you'd suspect when an uninhabited trailer with no power suddenly goes up like a flare in the middle of the night.