February 14, 2004
The incredibly long week...
A bulldozer hit a gas main down at Ogontz and Olney this afternoon at around 5pm. The intersection is about a block away from La Salle. The flames were reaching at least a hundred feet in the air, and went on for a couple of hours. The full news story can be found here. The miraculous thing is that nobody has been hurt, and that the buildings survived too.
I got an instant message from John Ogden at about 5pm about it...and then Graham came into my room and said the same thing. I grabbed my camera as I was leaving, and almost took it with me, but decided at the last second to leave it. I'm not sure fully why. I'm glad I didn't because I wound up wandering down there and just watching the proceedings with my jaw open. Standing on the corner of 20th and Olney with a couple of dozen people just watching the flames lick the sky and wondering how the hell it was going to be put out. It was the capstone to a memorable week, one I'm not sure that I'll be able to forget, whether or not I want to.
I wound up taking the image above at around 6:30PM, after watching the news for a while...it was taken from inside of the St. Miguel townhouses, right by the daycare center.
From Wednesday on, it seemed like this week had it out to get me. With any luck, I will never have three nights of duty in a row again. I got hit with a really nasty stomach virus on Wednesday into Thursday, and I'm still recovering from it now. I missed most of Laramie Tech Week, which was really strange - being the first time that I've not been involved with a tech week since I got to La Salle. Laramie was cancelled for tonight, by the way. I had no problems with it, keeping the perspective of what the heck was happening a block away.
My parents are coming up tomorrow for Laramie/my birthday (hopefully...assuming we can get a car near the school)...the weekend is looking promising.