So, fires are scary...

Well, today is a Monday like any other Monday, we finished classes came back here had lunch. However, by chance, or as luck may have it, the College of Pharmacy was having a "carnival" in the courtyard at the school from 11-3, so at 1 we took off on foot with the dogs to walk to school which is out of character, we usually drive. I'd brought my cash, ID and a bank card, I'm not sure why except I always seem to need them if I don't have them. The carnival had shut down early, so after talking for about half an hour with some classmates, we headed back a different way, through the school campus instead of around it. Coming around the circular drive I saw a girl taking a picture of something in the distance, which I wondered until I looked at the sky and saw the billowing black, white, gray, brown and blue smoke cloud. I pointed it out to Marie and she immediately (having more of a sense of direction than I) had an idea that it might very well be our trailer park. We walked up the hill and police cars were blocking the entrance to our trailer park and there were three or four fire trucks, two large ones parked right beside our trailer, blocking our trailer from the two that were on fire. We walked around and saw that it had completely consumed the fallow field next to the trailer park and to the elementary school and apartment building a quarter mile away. There were fire trucks speeding around the flames with high arches of water whipping around trying to keep the flames from spreading any farther. The fence that burned on the edge of the field caught some cars in the apartment building's parking lot on fire. Firemen with gas masks, heavy lime yellow green jackets, and helmets milled in and around the two trailers on fire. It just happened that the wind had been strong and out of the north, hence blowing the flames away from our trailer and cars less than 30 yards from the one that started it all. There was a woman, barefoot with her daughter, also barefoot, sobbing into a neighbor's shoulder. She knew it was her cigarette she threw under her porch that started it. She was lucky our other neighbor had been leaving just when he had, he saw the flames on the porch, thinking it was a bit unusual for a grill, and realized the trailer was on fire. He called the fire department and then climbed the porch and banged on their door. They were unaware the fire had started, and she grabbed her baby and got her other daughter (why she wasn't in school, I don't know). At that time, the trailer next door caught on fire. Not knowing if anyone was home, he went to the door and banged on it. The man inside had been sleeping. It was serendipitous how it all happened, that no one got hurt. It was really crazy scary.