Yikes!

Yesterday evening, Rachel and I heard the fire station whistle at around 5:30 pm. Since it wasn't noon, we both said, "Uh-oh, that's a bummer."

Quite the bummer.

Started hearing news reports on the radio that the fire involved a property right across the alley from my parents' condo. Since I'm the designated property manager for their condo (I even get paid for this title), I felt an obligation to go check the situation out, being that I'm so responsible and all.

The desire to gawk had absolutely nothing to do with it.

Smoke blanketed the entire city. Driving down Main Street was a bit surreal. Like a really dirty fog.

I parked a couple of blocks away so that I could maneuver better and walked over. Spent a fair amount of time watching from just across the alley. Almost got sprayed by the fire trucks on the street on the other side of the building. Figured out after, oh, 45 minutes or so that I was probably inhaling toxic materials. D'oh.

Two hours into the fire, they still hadn't gotten inside, since the hot spots kept flaring up.

While vacant, the building, the Holiday House, is employee housing owned by Aspen SkiCo and they were going to start moving in seasonal employees in less than a month. They were just about to finish up with interior renovations. The building is a complete loss so now they're down 60 beds at a time when they were already short on housing. Uggh. I saw Mike Kaplan, the CEO, walking down the street on his cellphone. Must have sucked to be him last night . . .

I got a few pictures. Not as many as I might have since, while I had the presence of mind to grab the camera on my way out the door, I left the memory card in the computer. The internal memory on my camera is pathetic.

Got home and smelled so smoky that I couldn't stand myself . . .