Houses burn with a smoke that is noticeably different than a slash burn, and when you see that kind of smoke in the middle of a neighborhood, you can expect the worst. I saw the smoke, drove to it, and took a few photographs.
Scanned from an old print.
Outstanding, Charlie. Looks like it was absolutely made for a newspaper story.
Did you get a certain rush shooting this? I ask, because I had the same experience 2 summers ago. I saw a huge blotch of very black smoke while looking out my front window. I grabbed the camera and drove a few block to a burning duplex. It was an absolute rush snapping shots of the flames, etc. It was also very sad to see the family of the residence crying in the driveway. Such devastation on a personal level.
Anyway, it was kind of cool playing "photojournalist" for a couple of hours. Just curious if it was as eventful for you.
-Tim
Thanks for the comments gentlemen.
T-bone: It was exciting in a very sad way. Much of my earliest photography was along the photojournalistic/documentary approach to certain events, so that may have muted the excitement level somewhat. I'd seen two previous house fires up close. In the first one (in SoCal) it happened in the middle of the night across the street from where I was living, and a person died in the fire. The second one was also in Portland and I was among the first to arrive, so I got the hose from a neighbor's house and tried to keep the flames of the burning garage from jumping to the house. When the fire department got there, I dropped the hose and grabbed my camera. In all three cases the overwhelming feeling was of sadness at seeing someone's home burning.
Up close, a big fire is scary as hell! And really hot!
Charlie
