Friday, October 24, 2008

A Little Excitement on Lincoln

In the interests of prompt, rather than accurate, news: it looks like a garage (or other outbuilding) on the south side of the 500 block of Lincoln burned this afternoon. Around 3:50PM I heard a loud thump; when I went outside to look around, I could see black smoke boiling up into the sky from a couple blocks away.

According to the police officer who evacuating people from their houses across the alley, an electrical line fell into someone's back yard and started a fire. I could see the fallen wire easily, although cause and effect aren't always clear.

It seems like the fire department was on it pretty quickly -- I saw at least five fire engines along with plenty of police as well. Hopefully there was limited damage (better a garage than a house!).

The police quite wisely kept all of us lookie-lous off of the actual block on Lincoln with all of the excitement, so I had to go back to work writing software. I'm probably better off leaving the color commentary to David Allen, anyway... :-)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

It was actually my garage that burned down. The story is that someone dropped a cigarette butt in the alley, which started a grass fire, that spread to a fence, that caused the neighbor's propane tank to explode and spread more fire around. The cops were looking for the alleged perpetrators but didn't seem to find anyone. My room faces the burned garage but I had gone out to grab a bite when this happened. I am fine though.

Ed said...

FYI two weeks ago, a fire started in the 400 block alley between Columbia and Jefferson. Part of a fence was lost and an outbuilding/garage was damaged. I don't know the exact origin, but it makes you wonder.

Anonymous said...

I actually called the Fire Department for the fire that Ed mentioned. The house is the big gold frame-covered-with-stucco two story house that has been vacant for more than 10 years. The fire had probably been smoldering for several hours, because I thought someone was cooking outdoors until my husband looked out an upstairs window and saw flames coming through the roof! The Fire Department got here very fast and had it out in no time. The fence was damaged by Firefighters needing to get to the building from the alley. It actually started from the combustible materials and "stuff" stored in the shed. I'm glad that you're OK, Henry. I heard the boom from the tank, and saw a Fire Department Suburban still there at 7.

Andrew said...

Glad to see you're OK Henry and I'm sorry to hear about your garage. If you decided to rebuild it you should put a green roof on top of it. I'll help plant it. (or solar panels)

Ed said...

Paula, would you believe that you were actually the second person to call on that fire. We'd called about an hour earlier. The fire truck showed up, but didn't bother traveling to the alley. They stayed about 10 minutes and then left. I'm glad they worked harder the second time (and glad no propane tanks were handy).

Speaking of fires, does anyone have information on the Orange Grove house east of White?