2. Things

Fire!

Last Friday night I came home to a fire in the neighborhood. A duplex a block from my place generated a 3-alarm fire that drew about 80 firefighters, a dozen or so firetrucks, including 2 ladder trucks, and a police chopper circling with a spotlight diffused by all the smoke. Quite a spectacular scene. So, I grabbed my camera and the 70-200mm f/2.8 and ran toward the excitement. Oh, nobody was home in either unit, so no acrid burning-flesh sort of nastiness to contend with.
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So, as soon as I get within site of emergency vehicles, lights, smoke and fantastic atmospherics... what do I get but a young couple making-out. Love isn't blind -- it's retarded.
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So, as soon as I get within site of emergency vehicles, lights, smoke and fantastic atmospherics... what do I get but a young couple making-out. Love isn't blind -- it's retarded.

Shoal Creek Blvdcatastropheemergencyfirefire trucksfirefightersfiremenhouse firesmoke

  • So, as soon as I get within site of emergency vehicles, lights, smoke and fantastic atmospherics... what do I get but a young couple making-out. Love isn't blind -- it's retarded.
  • My best establishing shot.
  • My second best establishing shot.
  • This one's pretty good too, however I could have done without all the utility lines.
  • The fire originated in the rear of the house, the side that cantilevers over Shoal Creek. Therefore, a couple of ladder trucks were brought in so they could reach over the 3-story tall building to knock down the flames. The nozzle on the end of the rigging must be 80 feet off the ground here.
  • This is the second ladder truck rig that was parked on the street directly in front of the duplex, then extended over the driveway that runs along the front of the row of duplexes.
  • Only about half of the haze in this image is smoke. That ladder 80 feet overhead is pouring water all over the rear of the house to the right of the peak. The second ladder's water stream is easier to make out entering frame left.
  • An Austin Firefighter runs the controls amid-ships on the second ladder truck.
  • Another look, straight up, at the first ladder rig. These rigs output a ton of water, so they were used only in brief spurts to knock down flames when they got past a certain threshold. The building was full of firefighters dragging their own waterlines and hand tools.
  • ...and speaking of tools...
  • From the front of the building, I mostly saw smoke, but the orange glow in the smoke cloud hinted there was much more going on out back.
  • So, here begins a series of images, shot from the same spot, showing how this fire was fought from the outside front of the building, this being all I could see of the proceedings. These flames, and more just over the ridge line, would flare-up every few minutes or so...
  • ...and the flames didn't cause any inordinate amount of excitement from the firefighters right away...
  • ...but suddenly, an apparently coordinated volley of massive amounts of water would come from everywhere. Flames would diminish. White smoke would billow...
  • ...sparks would fly...
  • ...roofing materials would dislodge...
  • ...more roofing would fly. They seemed to be trying to punch a hole in the roof to get at the fire...
  • ...and then after a couple of minutes, the water was shut off and steam would rise and firefighters would return to pick apart the house looking for more hot spots.
  • Here we see the Safety Officer (green hat) and a couple of red-hatted supervisor types, Dixon and Jones, studying the image in an infrared sensing camera.
  • Geek moment: a visible-spectrum sensor and a beyond-visible-spectrum sensor at work within view of *my* visible-spectrum sensor! What a catch!
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