Explosion
Something outside just blew up. I was just sitting here watching TV and then there was a bright flash of light behind me through my closed shades, followed almost instantly by a huge BOOM. It scared me shitless.
I knocked on my neighbor’s door. She’d heard it too. We both looked out the window. There was no smoke, no visible signs of fire, no sirens going off. No one else in our whole apartment complex was even looking out their windows to see what happened.
What. The. Fuck.
One of the scariest parts of living in DC is that whenever you hear something like that, your brain involuntarily thinks, “This is it. I should have moved.”
And now I’m also thinking I have no idea how people deal with experiencing that every day, hearing those things go off all around them. Because there are people somewhere experiencing that, right now. People who are seeing that flash, hearing that huge boom. Again. Right by them. Or steeling themselves for the next time they will. Because they know there will be a next time.
I’m scared for them. And scared for this country, too. We’ve been so lucky. So far. I hope to god we stay lucky.
Posted by dea on Jul 15, 2008 in dc, fear · 5 Comments
Tags: explosion, scary shit, surreal
Update: I still have no idea what it was. Went outside the next morning, and there were no signs of damage anywhere around.
Well, I’m glad you’re safe and sound.
I never made the connection before about you living near the capital, and that particular danger.
Given that you could see the flash, but no clear signs of damage, I’m guessing it was just an electrical transformer letting loose on one of the utility poles.
I used to live right by a hospital; almost any time there was a major storm, at least one of the transformers would explode, in glorious fashion, and all the lights in a three block radius would go out.
Two seconds later, the hospital’s generators would kick in, and the hospital, at least, would power back on.
The rest of us had to wait, natch.
BD: You’re probably right. I live very close to a big industrial-type building. Luckily for me, the lights didn’t go out, though.
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