Actually, it was the roof of the new expansion they’ve been building for the last several months, so sorry l’il pyro, you still have class on Monday. I have no reason to believe that the fire was anything more than an unfortunate accident, perhaps an errant blowtorch, but whenever I hear of (or see) a school on fire I assume someone wasted their weekend not studying and there is a test on Monday. Probably a French test. Those are impossible to fake your way through.
From what I could tell, it looked like there were stacks of building materials ablaze. They’d been covered by a blue tarp (that was rendered into vapor in a matter of seconds) and the stuff burned pretty intensely until the fire department and local TV crews showed up. It was quickly brought under control but it was still smoldering a 3 hours later when I drove by again.
I do have some concerns, though, about the fire itself. I’m assuming that the stacks on the roof would have eventually gone into the building. It seemed that the blaze moved awfully fast through material that was intended to surround the students of Alexandria’s only high school. I’m sure everything is safe, but it’s just something that several of the other gawkers also distressingly mentioned as the flames spread quickly around the roof.
Now, this would have been a pretty impressive and singular event if our neighbor’s house hadn’t burned all up just a few hours before.
Screaming fire trucks woke us the night previous, even though I couldn’t be bothered enough to go figure out what the hell was going on. I actually remember thinking to myself, “I’m sure whatever it is, they’ll take care of it,” then rolling over, stealing all the covers from the G, and returning to my dreams were I was able to perform a successful spin move on the football field. It wasn’t until daybreak, and the realization that the fire trucks were still there, that I laggardly understood that something really unfortunate had happened.
I haven’t had much exposure to large fires (especially since both the G and the D smacked a matchbook out my hand when I tried to light the entire thing on fire at the Cue Bar of Friday) so it was rather odd seeing two of them on the same day within a few hundred yards of each other. The AlexFD* earned their paychecks today.
Update: Neglected to mention the giant car accident that happened right in front of me too. I allowed a guy who was nosing his way out of the service road to go before me into the intersection and a white car barreled through the red light and t-boned him going at least 40. All in all, it was quite a disastrous weekend. I wish I could say I uttered something more eloquent than, “Damn, that could have been me,” as I motored away but…
“Damn, that could have been something something…”
So all in all, it was quite a disastrous weekend.
*George Washington was an early member of our fire department. In your face, Arlington.
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