I Just Watched A Building Burn Down

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

At about 7:00 I was taking a walk and as I passed a long line of trees I could see a large plume of smoke coming from the middle of downtown. Naturally, I started running towards it to see what was going on.

There was a small two-story complex that had a paint store, a beauty salon and a laundromat, and there was tons of smoke coming out of every hole in the building, but I couldn’t see any flames. The firemen didn’t seem too hurried, so I figured I missed the majority of what went on, but they began to smash the windows of the storefront.

I decided to stick around a little bit, and eventually ran into my parents. After a while, you could see flames coming out of the far end of the building, out of the laundromat, but the firefighters still didn’t seem to be doing much. Slowly, more of the building started catching fire, and in the span of 30 seconds or so, the entire right half of the building erupted in flames as the roof over the laundromat and beauty salon collapsed.

This is when the firefighters started pouring the water. I was probably 200 feet away from the fire and I could still easily feel its heat. Apparently, there were six propane tanks in the laundromat (where the fire seems to have originated). The firefighters would squelch most of the flames in that section, then move to a different section of the building, and the previous fire would just start again.

The fire crept leftward, and began to consume the paint shop. The fumes from the paint shop were dizzying. Piece by piece, the roof would collapse. Every time a section collapsed, huge flames accompanied by plumes of smoke would appear. The second floor of the building was for storage, and didn’t have any windows. You could see burning parts of the second floor falling into the stores, and structural beams falling over.

So my parents and I stayed around for a few more hours to watch the fire as it enveloped the building, and eventually we decided to go home.

Luckily, all the shops were closed when the fire began, and I don’t think anybody was hurt. As I type this, the fire is still going on, although most of the flames are out.

All in all, it was simultaneously tragic and sorta cool to watch. I probably won’t see a fire of that magnitude for some time.

2

[brief hijack]

Okay, explain this:

  1. This is a double-posted OP, which seems to be a growing problem on the board.

  2. The 2nd OP showed 1 reply. I tried to open that thread, figuring maybe it wasn’t blank, and got:
    a) A blank page with just the “Your Reply” box–no
    OP and no posted reply; and
    b) On the second try, got “invalid thread specified.”

W…T…F???

[/brief hijack]

3

Seeing as how the double-posted OP is now gone, I’m guessing you tried to access it just as the mod was deleting it.

4

I had a friend in town about a year and a half ago, and we were walking back from the store where we had gotten beer when we noticed the “guest house” across the street was on fire and the firemen were there. We said “Great,” opened some beers, and sat on my lawn watching. Fascinating to watch professionals of any kind in action.

5

Some years back, we were cruising the Chesapeake Bay, and we went to Rock Hall, MD, as one of our stops. As it happened, that day they were burning down an old house. Since it was to be razed anyway, the local fire department took advantage of the opportunity to do some training.

I’ve got a bunch of photos somewhere - it was an impressive show. It also keep me checking my smoke alarms, just in case.

6

I saw a building burning down once when I was a kid. It was the local ice storage warehouse that had become obsolete with the icebox. It had probably been vacant for at least 10 years and somehow caught fire while being demolished. The volunteer fire department had been called out to the site to make sure the fire didn’t spread to the surrounding fields.

7

Two summers ago, a chemical storage warehouse (I think that’s what it was - it’s a little hazy in my mind now) in the industrial area near the airport caught fire, and eventually spread to a garden supply center nearby. The plume of smoke could be seen from 35-50 miles away - I saw in from Northwest Phoenix, my husband saw it from East Mesa. We were a good sixty miles away from each other, if not farther. It started burning around 5:00 at night, just as I was starting home, and it was located about half a mile from a freeway I had to drive on to get home, so I had to drive through the smoke plume. In the three minutes I was in the smoke, I started to get lightheaded from the fumes of burning fertilizer and chemicals. I know that people who lived in the area were evacuated and had some respiratory problems.

8

Do you have an alarm in your attic?

About 2 years ago, in the middle of the night, I noticed my alarm clock was not working. I could see the hall night light still on, so assumed the breaker had tripped. I walked out the back to where the box was, and saw a section of the soffit was burning. I ran back inside to get everyone out just in time, as I was the last one walking out, I saw the ceilings start to collapse. The entire attic had been engulfed in flames, but not a single smoke alarm was going off, because all the smoke was upstairs. And the alarms/batteries were current.

It’s definitely no fun watching all your stuff burn up.

9

I saw a bridge get blown up several years ago.

The olf James River Bridge was being demolished once the new bridge was built and in use. I was in a boat on the river, about a mile from the bridge as I recall, with some friends of mine just to see them blow the joints and watch the whole shebang fall into the river. As I recall, the BOOM was supposed to happen at about 2pm, but kept being delayed all afternoon.

Finally, they blew it up about an hour before sunset.

Very cool!

10

I watched a fairly large hay barn burn. I was about a mile away with some friends and it was jusy starting to get dark and we noticed what seemed like two sunsets, one in the west where it should be and one in the east (oops, something wasn’t right?!?). We set off to investigate and came upon a hay barn that must have held several hundred round bales. As we arrived so did the owner and the local volunteer fire department. We just all sat and watched it burn as it was in a very rural area with no fire hydrants and one little fire truck wasn’t going to do anything to this blaze. What amazed me was the sound, like a tornado or freight train engine - a ominous roar. I think this blaze was actually large enough to start sort of a mini-firestorm effect as we could feel air from all around being pulled in towards the fire. It was hot enough to melt the corrugated metal roofing and hot enough that we could see the steele support beams glowing. Pretty wild.

Always remember Dopers, NEVER bale wet hay.

11

(former)Roommate watched Orlando City Hall blow up. Live.
Then again, anyone who watches Lethal Weapon III sees the same thing - they blew up the old one for the movie.

Old one was better looking than the new one, IMHO.

12

Last summer I watched the building across the street from where I work burn down. It was abandoned for years, and an awful eyesore. I think they decided a homeless person squatting there started it by accident. It was cool to watch but our building smelled like smoke all day. Yuck.

13

An old building in Nashua, NH caught fire one night as I was coming home from work. It had a couple of stores on the bottom floor and really ratty apartments above it, which is where the fire apparently started from a lit crack pipe. It was, by all appearances, a fast burner, and the fire department basically was there to insure it didn’t spread to the neighboring buildings. A bunch of us watched it from across the river; it was kinda cool to see the wooden inner structures collapsing while the brick shell stood longer. They didn’t knock down the rest of it for a while afterwards.