A storage facility was on fire in Williamsburg yesterday. The smell of smoke and ashes filled the air.
We watched from a distance.
I later saw the fire from the ferry. So strange to see fire from a boat. With this fire, so close to the water, there was even a special fire fighting boat shooting jets of water at the fire.
I was on a boat once that caught on fire. It was very scary.
Here's another fire/water related story. It's old but I think about it every time I hear of a fire. It's Samuel Pepys rapport from the fire of London, September 2 1666. Those birds:
So I down to the water-side, and there got a boat and through bridge, and there saw a lamentable fire. Poor Michell’s house, as far as the Old Swan, already burned that way, and the fire running further, that in a very little time it got as far as the Steeleyard, while I was there. Everybody endeavouring to remove their goods, and flinging into the river or bringing them into lighters that layoff; poor people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them, and then running into boats, or clambering from one pair of stairs by the water-side to another. And among other things, the poor pigeons, I perceive, were loth to leave their houses, but hovered about the windows and balconys till they were, some of them burned, their wings, and fell down.
