fire! fire!

last night there was a huge fire across the street from my flat. it was so insanely terrifying to watch. my flatmate woke us up, pounding on our doors, yelling "fire! there's a fire!" and of course my first thought was that there was a fire in our house and she was waking us up so that we could narrowly escape death. the truth made me feel a little guilty: that we could breath a sigh of relief, because it wasn't ours, but our neighbor's lives that were being totally devastated that night.

i called 911, half asleep, hoping i wasnt the first person to think of it. there were already people in the street yelling "fire! fire!" and ringing doorbells. i was on hold for at least a minute, which was pretty crazy, but by the time the operator came on asking what my emergency was, i could hear the first of 8 firetrucks coming towards the house.

by that time, a family of four had run out, the parents and two almost teenagers. nobody ran out of the other flat, but two people were taken to the hospital in an ambulance-- where did they come from?? the street was full of neighbors, but we didn't go out because the 911 operator told us to stay inside. plus it was the middle of the night.

firefighters' jobs are insane, btw. i've never seen such a fire in my life and meanwhile it is these dudes' jobs to go in???? i seriously thought the roof was gonna cave in, or the floor. i guess it's old hat to those guys. even crazier was that one guy, before the sffd arrived, after the family ran out and the whole flat was engulfed in flames, ran in with a teeny tiny fire extinguisher. um, way too little, way too late?? get the crap out of the building!!!!!

it's weird: this huge fire (which started out small in the middle flat and we watched it spread to the top flat) is just not important enough to be a news item in the san francisco online media outlets. i'm curious to find out how it started, but there's no mention of the fire anywhere on the line.

i was kind of nervous about going to bed. i wanted to make sure that fire was out out out before going back to sleep. we must've watched for an hour and a half. then i had to make my bed, because in my hurry to run out of my room (when i thought we were all going to die), i threw all my covers on the floor. i read for about an hour, just to get my mind on other things, but still had weird dreams, like that i couldn't sleep or that my other flatmate was having nightmares about the fire.

this morning, i woke up early because my phone was ringing. it was my bosses, calling to check on me. they could see the flames from their house and wanted to make sure i was okay. then i looked out the window because there's all this construction noise happening. not even 7 hours after i finally went to bed and the street is crawling again with activity, this time fire and smoke damage trucks. by 930, the whole building had been boarded up. there's a big pile of burnt debris in front of the house.

i wonder what happened to my neighbors.

i'm back

i went on vacation. i'm back now, from tahoe, where i went with my best friend and met up with our two other best friends from high school. which was a looooooong time ago.

i ate too much the entire time. it was owie. you'd think i'd be able to stop eating, but there was all this food. i am friends with a bunch of food foisters. they foist the food upon me, without eating it themselves. i find this irritating, but lovable. maybe because i have a love/ hate relationship with food, too. hee.

i'm tired.