Dahlek:

Oh my god, I just read what you posted about the one fire being the size of 5 boros in NYC. My god, I had no idea.

See, we have something called a Johnny Pump (at least that's what we called them years ago), The actual name is a fire hydrant. At least 4 on every block.

When the people who lived upstairs from me, (this happened about 7 years ago), the girl upstairs was frying french fries on the stove. All of a sudden, we hear screaming from upstairs, I look out my kitchen window and their's smoke coming from outside of the upstairs window. I rush upstairs and I saw the whole kitchen on fire. I had never been so close to fire before. It's like a living breathing entity. All of a sudden, the firemen show up, we were evacuated, and they brought the hoses in and wetted everything down. All the water went downstairs into my apartment and all my stuff got ruined and I couldn't use my stove for 5 days until it all dried out. I mean, who cares, it was just an inconvenience, compared to what the people are living through in Southern California right now. But I shudder to think what might have happened if we didn't have all these fire hydrants on every block.

But I will never forget standing in the kitchen watching the fire grow and sleek up the kitchen cabinets up until the ceiling. It moved so fast, I couldn't believe it. I was transfixed. The fireman had to yell at me to 'get out of here".

jeez.

Melody