two fires in one day

last night i woke up to sirens. and then more sirens. and then more sirens. and then more sirens.

i live down the street from the main fire station for my city, so i didn't think much about the noise until the lights from a cop car got me out of bed. the neon circling lights cast circus colors on my wall. i could hear voices from its radio. i threw on jeans and headed out the door.

fire. smoke. seven engines. a focused flood of water forcing itself into the second story window of the railroad building. i watched from a block away for twenty minutes. then i walked closer and found friends sitting along a cement wall across the street. we sat mostly in silence in the heart of the night. watching the firemen climb ladders, enter windows, point hoses, put on gear. from the distance we could hear the whine of a chainsaw. mega-flashlight beams illuminated the dark smoky windows.

the railroad building is home to cool businesses. at least one artist, catherine abel. the yoga centre. big brothers/big sisters. an architecture firm. a law office. our city baseball team. and the web design shop from whose site i got the above photo.

it is one of the coolest buildings in slo town. i always wished the top floor was apartments. last night, however, i was glad that they weren't.

earlier in the day there had been another fire. griswold's radiator, a barn-ish, beat-ish, weathered and tired building. i always liked its roots feel, marking slo's progression and slo's history like an old scar you got in kindergarten. a marker for the old-timey-town san luis once was. i guess you could say the same about the railroad square, where the men came to work in the olden days.

the house i live in now was once a hotel to those men. those workers. my entire neighborhood was built for these men. including the old brick building that stood in flames last night.

today i couldn't shake the loss, even though the buildings don't look that bad from the street. it was a loss for my city and neighborhood. a wound for the businesses and the artists. new scars to mark where we've been as we travel into our relentless future.

[postscript: i've heard through the grapevine that atleast two artists (not sure how many studios were in the building) didn't lose any of their artwork. good news.]