TAXI !!!

The other day I was sent out to a huge fire at a cab company. They once ran their cabs on propane but they were pretty much converted back to normal gasoline by this time. They still had a few cars in their fleet that ran on propane and they still had a 30,000 gallon tank of the stuff on their property. And the fire was raging out of control.

As I'm headed that way, the desk informs me of the tank and the potential explosion hazard. A half-hearted "watch yourself" echoed in my ear as I arrived on the scene.

I had to park my live truck two blocks away as the Cleveland Fire Department had sealed the area off pretty well. I got out and looked up to see no wires overhead, set the mast heading up and started to pull cable. I ran the cable down the street and around the corner and ran into a mass of people headed towards me. A firefighter is herding people in a mass away from the fire. "Keep moving!! The tank may explode!! Keep moving! " I stop dead in my tracks and wait for the people to go by. The firefighter looks at me, nods his head in a quiet hello and says, " You can keep going..."

Yeah...this thing is going to explode and he tells me that "I can keep going.." Riiiiiiighhhht. So, what do I do like a dumbass with a death wish?? I keep going down the street and set up my shot. Thankfuly the CFD had pretty much isolated the tank from the flames but smaller tanks inside the garage that had propane did set off small explosions that could be heard from about a mile away.

Turns out that the fire was set by an arsonist. There were two homes torched in the surrounding blocks a couple of days before this fire. Looks like we've got a firebug in the area and we'll be busy until they catch the little pyromaniac.