Tag Archives: fire

10 years

Seems like 10 years shouldn’t fly by the way this last decade has, but if you blinked you probably missed a lot.

10 years ago I was in college getting ready to go to my winter formal. My parents had come down to help with my hair and take pictures and sent me and my boyfriend on our merry way. The dance was awesome, I was involved with Campus Activities and had a lot of friends at the dance with me.

The only annoying part of the dance was the ride home…it took us almost an hour to drive what should have been a 20 minute ride. By the time we woke up the next day, we learned about the tragedy that started on December 3rd of 1999 at 6:13 PM. We all agreed it was stupid to keep sending in teams to find the previous two that had dissapeared, but what else where they supposed to do? Those were their buddies in there and they wanted them out. By the time the fire was out, 6 men had vanished into the warehouse and it would take days to find them all.

Our city was shut down for the funeral…it was spooky to see 290 with no cars on it whatsoever. Reporters quickly learned how to pronounce Worcester and firemen from all over the world came to pay their respects.  The flag on our campus was at half staff 2 weeks for each man. 12 weeks is too long a time to have the flags at mourning level.

Good things came out of the fire, however. A sense of community and support for the firefighters; a call for greater attention paid to homeless people in the winter; and a new firehouse on the site of the tragedy.

Smokey the Bear

Yesterday I was wasting some time before meeting friends for dinner and I walked over to the park at the corner of New Chardon and Cambridge Street to read my new book, Mop Men (which is excellent so far).

As I was wandering over to a bench, I see: a dog off leash, about 4 people sitting and smoking, and a pile of mulch, also smoking. Soooo not good.

What bothered me more was that there was a woman sitting right next to the pile of smoking mulch and she wasn’t doing anything. No worry, no action…just smoking her cigarette and ignoring everything.

So, I walked up quickly and poured half my bottle of water onto the area and then started stomping on it. And the woman is looking at me like I’m the crazy one! I finally got it put out after about a minute or so and sat down to read my book.

She asked me about it after I sat down and seemed incredibly surprised that mulch catches on fire quickly…idiot.

Now, mulch can catch on fire if someone leaves a not put out cigarette in it or a match, but I think this one started spontaneously as the high heat, wind, and intense sun combined to make conditions favorable. This article is interesting, there have been multiple fires already this year in Illinois. Hopefully, I will not have to play fireman again this year.

Mulch Fire Remains
Mulch Fire Remains