Tag: Fire

Parking Lot Worries

I work in a facility that has two buildings and two parking lots with one driveway leading to both. My company is in building two and we have other tenants on a couple of floors in building two and in all of building one.

This morning I was stopped at the stoplight outside of the driveway and I saw something concerning. Someone pulled into the facility in a tesla cybertruck. Apart from questioning the cybertruck owners politics (musk is a nazi) and taste (cyber trucks are the fugliest vehicles on the road) I immediately started to worry about my own car’s safety.

In recent weeks, teslas in general but more specifically cybertrucks (aka swasticars) have been targets for vandalism. Apparently someone even threw molotov cocktails at a tesla dealer in Las Vegas yesterday. While I don’t condone violence of any kind, I have to say that it couldn’t have happened to a nicer nazi billionaire, right? Still… knowing that there is a swasticar parking near where I park my car makes me worried that maybe that swasticar might spontaneously combust and cause damage to other, non-nazi, cars parked nearby? That would be terrible.

I did not see if the tesla went to my building’s parking lot or not. I think it went to the other building. I hope so. I kept my eyes pealed as I searched for a parking spot of my own just to make sure my little Kia wasn’t going to be anywhere near any dangerous swasticars. I am pretty sure my car is safe, but constant vigilance, you know? Stay safe out there.

Two Fun Monday Things

I just want to add a quick post to mention two things that just happened because they are funny and weird and worth mentioning on a pointless blog like this.

I’ve mentioned before that I like to listen to podcasts while I work. I play them through the Apple HomePod Minis in the bedroom. Today when I tried to connect to them via Airplay they weren’t available. I asked Siri to tell me the weather and it came back saying it wasn’t connected to the internet. Our HomePods are setup through Jen’s Home app so I told her and when she gets a chance she’ll look at it.

A few minutes later, I am sitting at my desk working and suddenly, seemingly at random, Deep Purple’s Space Truckin’ comes roaring out of the HomePods. Oh yeah, it does! Come on, let’s go space truckin’ babie!

I know why it happened, but it’s just really funny that it did. Once the song was over it started playing some horrid Aerosmith song and I couldn’t get that bastard shut off fast enough. The Purple song though, that was a treat.

A few minutes after that I decided to water the plants. Literally, that’s not a urination reference. I literally watered the plants. I have a candle burning on the same table the plants sit on. As I was watering one particular plant I smelled smoke. I then saw smoke. Huh? Oh, it’s just my arm. It was over the candle and my arm hairs were singeing off. That’s all. Nothing major. No damage done… except to a few arm hairs. I can still sort of smell it though.

All of this before 10:00am

Haverhill is on Fire

When I pulled onto route 213 on the way to band practice last night, this was what I saw…
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When I pulled onto 495 it was still there.
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When I exited off of 495 it was still there, but getting closer and closer.

Youtube provides us with some better video than what I got from far away. It was a seven alarm fire in an abandoned warehouse. Some of the news reports look like a major inferno.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq0KnPNjvto

Fire

Last night Jen and I did something that we occasionally do. We wanted to go out to eat, but couldn’t decide where. When that happens we will sometimes just get in the car, pick a direction, start driving, and see what we find.

In yesterday’s case we didn’t find anything that seemed right. We went as far south as Woburn before turning around. When we crossed back into Methuen on route 110 we decided to see if there was anything appealing on Riverside Drive. Not long after crossing into Lawrence, we came upon a scary scene.

Hancock Street was one block to the North and a big chunk of it was on fire. We saw crowds of people on Riverside, about a dozen firemen, and all,sorts of fire fighting equipment. There was a lot of smoke in the air, and in a couple of spots we could look to our left and see massive, thick smoke on the next street over.

Jen did a little Internet news searching and we found that as of 7:00pm or so, two houses had collapsed and a third was destroyed. My heart goes out to the people who lost their homes. May they get back on their feet quickly.

Whenever you hear about emergency situations in Lawrence these days, the first thought is always to their much publicized budget problems and their insanely huge cuts in police and fire staff. By the time we saw things, there were fire companies from all of the nearby towns assisting, but there must have been some stressful moments for the Lawrence Fire Department when they arrived on the scene and saw how bad it was.

The other thought you have when you hear about a fire in Lawrence is the arson spree that happened there back in the 90’s. it was in the 90’s, wasn’t it? Whenever it was, you do not want to see that insanity start happening again.

Fortunately, Jen’s Internet news searching yesterday told us that no one was hurt during the fire. That is good news, and I hope it’s still the case today.