Up In Flames

At around midnight last night, I was sleeping well but abruptly awoken by fire truck sirens. We live close to the freeway so it’s not that uncommon to hear the occasional siren, but these were really, really nearby and it kind of sounded like they stopped right outside the window. That’s when I put on my glasses and sat up, then noticed that the whole bedroom was orange, and the orange light shining through the mini-blinds was much brighter than the orange city street lights generally are. That’s when I peeked through the blinds and saw flames directly out the window, no more than 20 feet away.

I had no idea what was going on, all I could see were flames really close, and they were very tall flames and stretched across the parking lot the length of about three vehicles. I woke up Lizzie and we grabbed the Cat. Then we ran down to the garage to jump in her car, mine was in the outdoor parking lot just a few parking spaces away from the fire. We could smell smoke in the hallway as we went down to the garage, it smelled like plastic burning, so I thought a car or cars must be on fire. You see, I was trying to logically think about what was going on out there instead of jumping to the conclusion that it was some kind of armageddon out there.

So we drove out of the garage and around the block back around to see what was going on in the parking lot. We saw the firefighters putting out a car completely engulfed in flames, and there was fire burning on the cement in front of the car as well. They put it out rather quickly.

From our perspective inside, it looked like a lot of fire and it really was pretty close to us. More fire than any little extinguisher would put out, and with it being out by cars which can explode I got a little nervous. We kept hearing loud pops as we were evacuating, probably fuel lines in the car blowing up or something of that nature.

We realized it was obviously under control, so I went out to the crowd of residents standing by the front entrance and asked what happened. No one knew for sure but it sounded like the car just caught on fire as they were driving into the parking lot. It was an 1980s Saab, probably had some electrical issues or something. No one was hurt, and no other cars were ignited.

Waking up in the middle of the night, looking outside and seeing nothing but flames right out the window is definitely a new one for me. It was pretty nerve-wracking, and I think getting the hell out of there wasn’t the worst thing in the world to do. Next time, I might grab the fire extinguisher and try to get a better view before rushing out so quickly. I couldn’t even see that it was a car from where we were, it looked like three cars on fire. I’ve never seen a car burn up quite like that.

So I got back to sleep pretty late. It took a while for the nerves to calm down. Tonight I’m tired from the lost sleep of course. At least I can feel glad it wasn’t my car on fire, and that nothing was lost but someone’s old car and no one was hurt. I feel pretty bad for whoever that was, hopefully they have better insurance than I.