cinders on the porch

So last night was Scott's "24 hour fast-a-thon" at his parish, which is basically a lock-in with a ton of kids who go without food for- well, yes, 24 hours, to raise money for Catholic Relief Services. Anyway, I went down to visit them and stayed 'till the amazingly late hour of 2:00 am.
Passing through the Wakefield area on 95, I noticed that the sky was pink- I thought maybe from the North Shore Mall or something, but it was really pink-er than I thought that should look. Then I noticed smoke and light wayyyy off- I thought it MUST be a fire, and a big one, and I fought the urge to go off looking for it. But as I traveled farther up 95 and then to route 1, the light got brighter and I realized I was headed straight toward it.
It was the old Danvers State Hospital grounds, and the fire was RAGING. Many of us drivers pulled over to take a look and I luckily had my camera...



























It's hard to take good pictures of fire... but I hope you can tell from these how wild the fire was. The grey-ish one above shows the big burning cinders that were floating down onto Route 1, where a bunch of us were pulled over to gawk. I got what I thought was the most brilliant and original idea to go up to the supermarket parking lot on the opposite side of the highways from DS... when I got there I saw I was not alone in this plan! It was like a drive-in movie theater!














Okay, one more- I was surprised to see how well the fire could be seen from all around- I never had known that from the medical center near my house, you could see the state hospital. Here's a view of how the fire looked from that parking lot:














Today there is soot in the air, and we have black cinders on the porch. And the worst part is, Scott's too tired to wake up and look at my pictures!!!