KaBOOOM!!!

Last summer (I'm rifling through old files now that I'm actively blogging, again), anyway, last summer I just happen to be looking out over Old Town, to the west. I catch a flash out of the corner of my eye; see a flaming mushroom cloud shooting up somewhere just east of Halsted Avenue; then hear the explosion (physics rocks). I'm sure it was a roofdeck propane tank that blew. Hopefully no one was hurt. I grabbed my camera and took this shot thinking all the while about Glen A. Larsen. The cloud is about 400 ft high at this point. If you click on this image and look right at the base of the smoke column, you can see the fire started by the blast among the trees. The firestation is in plain sight from the balcony, so I watched and waited for the sirens and the trucks to appear. The firehouse is about two blocks east of the blast, towards the spot where I took this shot and along that street that runs towards the railing of the balcony. But when I saw the emegency vehicles pull out of the station, they headed East (in my direction)! Not West! They eventually got it right. A couple of days later I walked past the station on my way to work. I stopped and asked what had blown up on Tuesday, but the fireman told me that it was a different crew on duty that day...
h.e.