Too close for comfort

Too close for comfort, originally uploaded by Bruce M Walker.

This is how I spent much of my Monday night. We were woken up at 11:45 PM by loud beeping that turned out to be the UPSes going off. I got up to investigate how extensive the power failure was. When I stepped out the front door, I discovered the entire north-west sky lit up by a huge orange fireball. There's a new "luxury executive" townhouse complex being built over in that direction, and sure enough it turned out that the entire complex was up in flames. This is the second time in five months that the same complex has been torched, the first took out 8 units. This one destroyed over 75% of the site, about 57 units by one count.

The image directly above is the view from the bottom of my driveway, looking north-west. A light breeze was carrying the smoke and burning embers north-east over a church and a big park.