I was turning on to my street today after work when I saw a flashing fire engine driving through the gatehouse to my development. Great, I thought, I really hope it's not another false alarm in my building. Or, worse yet, an actual alarm. I turned to enter the gatehouse and saw that the fire engine had stopped in front of one of the newer buildings, where construction was in its final stages. There, right in front of the building, was a dumpster with flames shooting out of the top. Wow, I thought, it's a REAL fire. Of course, this meant that everyone was slowing to gawk at it, blocking all incoming and outgoing traffic. I made sure the car in front of me was really going to stop and watch, then cut around him, drove through the roundabout the wrong way (the fire truck prevented me from going around correctly), steered around the pedestrian onlookers, and went to my garage. After picking up my mail from the lobby, I became curious and went outside to look. The firefighters had promptly extinguished the fire, but it was still smoking, and there was a distinct smell in the air, so I went back into my building and up to my unit.
I took a quick look from my balcony a little while later. It was a little hard to see everything from my altitude, but I could see that there firefighters inside the dumpster, shovelling through the charred debris, probably looking for the cause of the fire. They had cordoned off half of the roundabout with caution tape. I guess I came home just in time to see the exciting part and avoid the inconvenient part.
A week ago, a story in the news caught my eye. An earthquake had hit northern Italy. Upon closer inspection, I found out that the epicenter was just 40 km north of Bologna. It was a magnitude 6.0 quake, strong enough to be felt as far away as Venice and Milan. My first thought was of the people I had met when I was there a year and a half ago. The photos of the collapsed buildings were in smaller towns to the north, so I figured that the ones in Bologna were probably okay. It was still sad to see centuries-old building reduced to rubble so quickly. The one of the clock tower with only half a clock still standing affected me the most.
I woke this morning to hear on the radio that another earthquake of similar strength had hit the same area again yesterday. This time, more buildings collapsed, likely because the first one weakened their structures, and more people died, sadly because they had chosen that exact moment to enter damaged buildings to retrieve belongings or to assess the damage. When I saw that schools in Bologna had to be evacuated for safety, I decided I had to check and see if the people from our equipment vendor were okay. After all, their facility is up in the hills. I sent an e-mail to a couple of them to ask how they were doing. I received a reply pretty quickly from one of them, saying that they were all pretty scared but everyone was okay. That was reassuring to hear. They're the nicest people, and I came to feel at home in Bologna when I was there. I'm hoping that none of the amazing architecture was affected by the quakes. But something tells me this isn't the end of it.
The part that hurts the most...the earthquakes have affected the parmigiano reggiano industry. Time to stock up.
"This fire is out of control, I'm going to burn this city"
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