My desk is in my living room, to the left of the window. My view out this window is over the roof of the building next door, into the space between the buildings on my street--St. Mark's Place--and the street behind me--East 9th. And of course, a view of and into those 9th Street buildings. On a typical night I see my neighbors come and go from the various rooms of their apartments, alone and in couples, with a drink in hand, doing the dishes, lying on the bed, naked or clothed. It's one of the fascinating aspects of dense urban life.

Anyway, as I sat at the computer tonight reading political blogs and other unimportant news, I thought I smelled something burning. But another facet of apartment life is smelling the burned food of your neighbors. After five minutes, though, the smell was more like a fireplace smell--burning wood. I ignored it for a while, and then thought I better investigate. I sniffed around the window (which has a curtain on it), then proceeded to the bathroom and kitchen windows to make sure it was coming from outside and nothing was burning in here. When I came back to the living room and pulled the curtain back, I saw a huge plume of smoke rising from the top floor (maybe the 5th or 6th floor) one of the 9th Street buildings across the backyards. The wind was directing this plume of smoke right into my apartment. Not three seconds after seeing this smoke, I heard sirens.

Then I did what every good American does in this situation: I grabbed my video camera! Just as I got back to the window, the whole top floor of that building erupted in flame. Fire was coming out of the windows like a, well, like a building on fire. It was terrifying! I mean, I didn't fear for my own safety, as it was far enough away that I knew the fire department would have it under control before it could spread over the five or six buildings it would take to reach mine.

Glass was shattering in loud bursts. I think it was caused by the fire, but also the firemen were arriving in my sight about the same time, so it might have been them breaking the windows in. It took them about 10 minutes to calm the fire (and my heart rate). I took a break from snapping pictures to put towels on the seams between my upper and lower windows (this was a failed effort: when I turned around, I saw my apartment was filled with smoke--not filled like from a fire, but filled like someone burned a meal).

As I've been writing this they broke through some more windows, and sawed off some of the fire escape. And now the sirens have stopped, the car alarms set off by the sirens have been silenced, and I'm left with the sounds of them hosing down the interior of that building and random combinations of hammering, ripping wood, and yelling. I hope no one was hurt.

Here are three of the pix:

The vertical lines in this picture are the bars on my window.

This one and the next are zoomed in much closer.

You can see a fireman on the fire escape in these second two shots.