Saturday morning on Smetanova Street. Click to enlarge.

At around 4 a.m. on Saturday morning I was lying in bed trying to fall asleep when I noticed a loud crackling sound. Minutes later, my wife (who was also fighting an attack of insomnia) discovered the source of the noise: a column of fire on Smetanova street. Having no hope of sleeping, I went outside to take a look.


The culprit in action. Firefighters were working on it from behind.

As always, the pictures don’t do the blaze any justice. Everything happened quickly, so by the time I made it outside a fleet of fire trucks had already arrived and were hosing it down from multiple angles. When I first saw it from the balcony, it was easily 15 meters tall. By the time I got there, it was a sorry shade of its former self.

Firefighters attacked the blaze from all possible sides.

It took them about ten to fifteen minutes to kill it. The firefighters used the old “overwhelming force” strategy. As far as I could tell, they called in at least five trucks, all of which immediately got involved.

The abandoned shack is gone and the fire is extinguished.

At any rate, the cold morning air did me some good. When I returned home, I crawled back into bed and finally fell into a deep and satisfying sleep.