Oh what a night! A gassy night, actually. No, not me. My city. On Saturday some pipe thingy (do you sense my lack of technical knowledge?) corroded. Then it burst. Then gas built up. Underground. Confined. Yup, totally exploded part of the street, broke storefront windows and wreaked havoc in the city.

But on Sunday morning when I heard about this story, I just though "oh how strange" and went about my day. Didn't really give it a second thought until Sunday evening about 9:30PM or so when the lights started to flicker. And then the computer. And then everything that was plugged into an outlet. I went to the front bay window to see that the street was crazy full of commotion. Half a dozen fire trucks on my block alone. It's not a very long city block mind you. And at least that many police cars. The street was blocked off and all sorts of emergency personnel were running around.

So it turns out earlier that night in another part of the city there was a fire related to this gas issue. And then in a little health food market that is half way up my block, the gas issue caused one of the (I think refrigerator) motors to have a little explosion or something. No major fire but it was a big issue because the fire department discovered that smoke was coming up from the ground under all of our homes (and businesses- there are both on my street). The fire peeps were in and out of all the buildings next to the food store to check them. They told everyone else to just turn everything off and unplug computers. Since it was dark and cold (they also had us open front windows to let CO2 escape), I went to bed. Only to get woken up from the fire department banging on the door because they now thought my house might have too high levels of CO2 to allow me to stay there last night. It was now around 12:30AM. They went all through the house from the basement to the attic and made sure we were safe. Puppy was a wreck with strangers in strange outfits in and out of her house. But after several check-ups we were fine. The power eventually totally went out too which was not fun because I was wide awake. My window was open and it was loud outside with so much commotion. Somewhere during all of this there was another fire a block behind me. The smell was crazy strong. I finally closed my bedroom window and turned the heat back on this morning because even though it is spring, I was very cold!

So now it is sunny and beautiful outside. Grid (power company) trucks are still all over the place but at least the power is back on. I mean, what would I do without blog access for a full day?! The horror!!

Everyone survived though. The entire neighborhood is likely grouchy today because of our lack of sleep but at least we are all alive to tell the bizarre story. Such a serious problem could have been much more destructive. In the end I feel very blessed that my city has so many capable emergency personnel to take care of me!