Excitement in the neighborhood!
Whoa!
It’s now 2:01 AM here in the Mountain West. I was up already, way too late - the All-Star Game went on forever (and the National League lost again, darn it!)
A bit over ten minutes ago I heard a serious gunshot. Sounded like a 12-gauge, and as if it came from, like, a block to the northwest. Loud and authoritative.
Emma was in the backyard. As I went to let her in - this time around I wanted her in as badly as I knew she wanted in - I heard a second shot. Sounded like the same weapon, from about the same location. Sometimes loud noises trick me as to their direction because of what open windows or doors I happen to be nearest. This one I’m fairly confident about because the back door was open and I’m not sitting too far away.
So that was alarming. Sirens started to go off within a minute or two of the second shot. I thought they were coming in response to the shots (surprising that they responded at all, let alone that quickly), and indeed it sounded as if a siren did stop on Fourth Street, a block west of where I thought the shots came from.
Then I saw red flashers go past the front window. Not as if they were on my street - that tends to light the whole place up and startle the crap out of me. Anyway, they went south to north, which is the opposite direction from how they’d usually come down this street. I can often see traffic on Second Street, another major north-south thoroughfare, past my across-the-street neighbor’s driveway. Behind their back wall runs a ditch and then an undeveloped strip, and then Second. So I peered tentatively out the front window.
Only to see white smoke billowing out from what appeared to be the vicinity of where the railroad tracks cross Griegos, several blocks to the northeast. It was billowing pretty fiercely and gave me the impression it had begun rather recently. The smoke was lit up yellow; I didn’t think anything in particular about it at the time, but when I just went and looked again there was no sign of smoke or yellow illumination in that direction. Either that was fire lighting the clouds, or maybe fire trucks lighting the scene.
That’s a pretty quick resolution.
I thought a few minutes ago I could smell burned plastic, and now I just smelled something like damp ash. Both might’ve been my hyperactive imagination.
I’m not sure there could be any sensible connection between the gunshots and the fire. Still, it seems highly coincidental for two such unusual events to break out so close together in such a short period of time. Doubt I’ll ever find out what actually happened.
And now I’m jagged on adrenaline, and I’m never gonna get to sleep…
Tags: Current Events
July 18th, 2008 at 2:45 am
[...] Recently I blogged about some curious events: shotgun blasts in the night and mysterious smoke pouring into the sky [...]