Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Sirens.

[Goes to look.]

Oh my. Big thick black billowing mass of smoke. Looks like about three blocks East and about a block North, as far as I can tell from my window. Flames visible over the rooftops between here and there. (Correction 04:50 -- more like seven blocks East and two blocks North)

IIRC, that's an inhabited part of the neighbourhood, not one of the parts with lots of vacant houses. :-(

UPDATE 04:50 -- Bystanders were a little vague/uncertain as to what was in the building that burned -- someone thought it was a warehouse and somebody else thought some classrooms or offices of some organization were there. An apartment building across the street had apparently been evacuated for a while for fear of the fire spreading from rooftop to rooftop via embers, but folks had been let back in when I got there. The folks watching from the front steps said it got Really Hot there for a while. There was speculation as to whether terminal patients on the top floor of a health care facility nearby (across an alley from the burning building) would have to be moved. All of this is from neighbours, not from authorities.

There were large (more than twice the size of a loaf of bread) chunks of burnt-something on the sidewalk and on top of parked cars. There were also many more much smaller chunks and particles.

There were lots of fire trucks and a few ambulances and police cars present when I got there. I missed the sky-full-of-embers show, but there were still flames jetting out from windows. Plenty to see, but poor camera angles due to trees and fire trucks blocking my sight lines. I had a good angle briefly, but then a police officer said the firefighters needed access to the corner I was standing on and moved us back. (Not complaining -- their job's a Hell of a lot more important than my photography.)

Note that this is not the five-alarm apartment fire, also in West Baltimore, that they're currently talking about on the Channel 11 (WBAL) television news.

As I was leaving, two firefighers were talking about what a busy night it was -- this was their second fire of the night, and that five-alarm apartment fire makes number three. WTF? The big surge in fire frequency usually comes in Winter, not Spring, I thought. Tuesday night there was a fire on Fulton Ave., a few blocks North of my house.