FUEGO!

Yesterday afternoon I came into the kitchen and looked out the window and saw this...


I was pretty shocked to see a fairly large--and at that moment fire crew-free--fire taking place along Vista Hermosa Blvd. I immediately grabbed our camcorder and started filming it. I then headed down to Luis', our neighbor on the third floor, as he has a view looking directly on Vista Hermosa (whereas we only have the view from the kitchen). From his balcony, I could see the fire stretched even farther and was easily 100' in length, right up next to the road and working its way down the hill. It's been really dry here since the rainy season ended late last October, so everything was going up pretty fast and there was a ton of smoke and debris flying around.


Luis told me when I arrived he had called the bomberos (firemen) almost 10 minutes ago and they still hadn't arrived. It was almost another 10 minutes from when I was there until they did show up. The camera crews, however, were immediately on the scene, filming even when I first noticed it. Unlike U.S. towns and cities, Guatemala City does not have fire hydrants on every corner, so they have big tankers drive in and hook up their hoses to. The firemen worked on containing the fire for at least three hours. And after they left, it was still smoking! And it was still smoking this morning when we got up! Guess they thought it was good enough. By now, it's finally stopped and the air smells normal again. But all yesterday afternoon and evening we had to keep all our windows shut to keep the strong stench and debris out.

Thankfully no residencies were affected and not too many trees were burned up. In fact, I suspect everything will look normal again soon once the rainy season returns next month.