Look Up, the Sky is Falling

Around 2:00 today, our lights in the office flickered and the power surged. Since power outages and failing machinery are not an uncommon occurance in our ancient building, we initially wrote it off as another reason to whine to our landlord. But then we saw the thick, towering plume of black smoke billowing up from a spot in the distance toward the northeast--directly in my line of sight from my workstation. Of course, I spend most of my time watching my computer monitor, so I hadn't noticed the smoke before then.

We watched, mesmerized as flames leapt up through the smoke, high above the buildings in the foreground obscuring our view. The column of smoke rose thousands of feet into the sky before it fanned out, covering downtown in an eerie umbrella, and the flames continued to grow in intensity.

We quickly began searching for news about the fire and finally found out that there had been an explosion at a chemical plant two miles away from us. The chemicals burned like gasoline, fueling the fire to such an extent that the firefighters could only try to keep the fire contained because they had no hope of putting it out. They immediately called in Hazmat teams because of the threat of dangerous chemicals, and area schools, businesses and homes were evacuated. They closed several of the bridges, and we watched through our window as traffic on I-70 became more and more congested.

Then we noticed sporatic chunks of ash falling from the sky and blowing through the streets. I even collected a couple from our parking lot on the way out (wearing gloves, of course). It was very light and spongey and crumbled easily in my fingers. Hope it isn't radioactive.

Luckily, no one was injured in the fire--which is truly amazing considering the impact it has had on the community already. Not to be paranoid or anything, but it does make you realize how many dangers we have around us all the time, how many potential disasters we survive every day--like driving home from work. We tell ourselves we're safe because we couldn't possibly deal with the fact that we are really fragile creatures.