The scene of the crime...

After dinner, I got in my little car and drove over to Big Bend Avenue to go look at the carnage. I had heard on TV that most of the units on the scene were leaving and that all traffic had been opened up on the road. It was now officially a public area. No harm in going by.

Yes, I'm a shameful gawker.

So, I went by at about 30 mph. Not enough time to get a long look, but long enough to get a fair impression of the damage. Indeed, my first thought was, hey, that house doesn't look so bad, just like half of it is gone, but then I realized that what I was looking at was damage to the adjacent house, which looked scorched through and through but still structurally intact on the outside, at least. The damage was noticeably lesser on the...west side of the house than on the east. You could tell that it

The neighboring house was gone. Just charred bricks. Nothing left, maybe part of a wall. There was police tape up across the street and a few official vehicles around...mind you I am still driving by at 30 mph. The house was gone. To my right as I drive south on Big Bend, the antenna of a TV satellite van rises from behind an antique store I used to visit when I was decorating my shitty apartment right after I entered grad school. I assume that is where the press gathered as the standoff unfolded, under the cover and concealment of the antique shop, really just across Big Bend from the cross street, Zephyr, to which the police had been called this morning.

I turned onto Manchester, which means nothing to you, past the Maplewood City Hall. Reporters had been there all day for press conferences and, coincidentally, because the one responder who was killed was the son of a former Maplewood mayor.

My sister and my brother, who work not two blocks from the site of the fire, shooting and explosion, remembered meeting the firefighter who had been killed. He had been on an inspection of their store several months ago, and my sister had grooved on him because he was the only firefighter on the inspection team who was about her age.

HJ