Cut the cut, find the fire

"A firefighter inspects damage as others put out remaining flames at a house fire on Glenmore Ave. off of Bel Air Road in Baltimore, Md. Wednesday evening. It appeared the fire damaged mostly the rear half of the home and it was reported everyone made it from the home safely."

Woah. Where did the week go? I normally try to post every other day or worst case scenario once every three days, but I have no idea what happen to the days this week.

They've been keeping me busy at The Sun and that's a good thing. I am in the middle of a 10 day week and things have been fairly exciting this week.

On Wednesday, I worked the atypical nine to five shift and had some straight forward assignments. Since my morning actually kicked off around 7 a.m., no that's not when I rolled out of bed, I finished an hour and a half early.

Since I was off, my to do list called for something important - getting a haircut. It has been a high priority for the past two weeks. Some priorities, right?

Anyways, some how I managed to score an appointment the day of my call and at 5 p.m. Perfect.

After clocking out, I grabbed some dinner, washed my car up the road (thanks to my mistake of parking under a tree on Bank Street, thanks birds) and headed toward Bel Air Road.

But then something caught my eye as I stepped out of my car into the parking lot of the hair cut parlor. Smoke.

It wasn’t billowing, thick black smoke. It was almost as if something exploded and then dissipated into nothing.

With about 10 minutes to spare, I jumped back into my driver seat and puttered down the road to see what was going on. As I inched closer and closer to the thin smoke, I began seeing helicopters and people standing on the sidewalks.

Quickly I grabbed a parking spot at a convenient store and called my assignment editor to see if he knew of anything going on in my vicinity. He didn't, but urged me to check it out.

Sprinting down the street, asking those outside what was going on; I tried to find my way toward the emergency. About five-blocks down the road, I was clueless on where to go, but then I followed the sound of a passing fire truck.

I cut across Bel Air Road and ran for another solid five-minutes. At this point I was glad I had not been drinking the night before, and pleased to know playing soccer and mountain biking every week put me in somewhat good shape.

Finally, I found the street of the fire. More than six fire trucks lined the road and as I approached the house, it looked as if it had been extinguished.

I followed up with my editor, canceled my hair cut and got off a couple frames before I was politely asked to move to the street among the bystanders. In addition, I was told everyone had made it out safely, which is always a plus, but the damage was fairly significant.

I didn't spend much time there, as the scene was beginning to wrap up. Nonetheless, the small, off the clock adventure was enough to satisfy me for the evening, even though the images weren't "exciting" per say and never made it to print.