Tag Archives: Trucks

Dry Run at the State Convention

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Police riot shieldsCOLORADO SPRINGS- Interviewers kept asking me ahead of time if the local Colorado Democratic State Convention was going to be a dry run for groups planning something big at the national convention in August. Their curiosity might have been piqued by the mention of PROTEST COLORADO on Michael Moore’s list of “more fun with dry runs” leading to the DNC. I told them I was aware of no such plans, but it became clear to me today that the news reporters had been on to something. There WAS a dry run in the works, and it was being carried out by law enforcement.

I was arrested at 7:05AM Saturday, through no planning of my own. There was confusion over where the First Amendment applied and where it did not. There was a “FREE SPEECH ZONE” which shared a police-tape demarcated area with a “BOOSTER ZONE” for those whose speech was regulated by the Democratic Party. Which part was which was not universally understood by either the public or many of the police officers. Police commanders alluded to previously agreed perimeters, while we asserted what we understood had been decided. Calling in a supervisor led not to a discussion but to the barking of orders, our mouths agape. The police seized upon the chance to arrest, process and hold us, until our opportunity to be heard had passed. We were mighty confused at the time, but in retrospect the police maneuver was carried out like clockwork.

It seems to be my habit to be blind sided by heavy handed authority. But I hope this does not detract from the principal dynamic at play. I am an ordinary American citizen, with an ordinary citizen’s right to express myself. Even playing within the post-911 limitations placed on our civil liberties, abiding by a “free speech zone,” my right to participate in our democracy is being muted by a false authoritarian concern for public safety.

DELAY AND RELOCATION
Particularly indicative of the police strategy was what they did with Peter and I after our arrest. We were taken across the street to the Quail Lake Loop El Paso County Sheriff substation where we were booked and cited first for obstruction, then for trespass. Forms and fingerprints were completed twice amid pleasant conversation and clarification of the “free speech zone” boundaries. We were informed that we would be free to return to the convention grounds, but that a subsequent breach of the rules would be treated with more severity. Then, instead of releasing us there, or at the nearby Sand Creek police station, an order was received to deliver us to the northern-most police substation in the city 15 miles away. Peter and I were dropped off in the parking lot of the Falcon Substation at Academy Blvd and Briargate, and only then was my cellphone returned with which I could try to arrange a ride. By the time we were able to return to our friends and vehicles at the convention, the 7-10am demonstration was passed.

SET UP?
Several weeks beforehand the CSPD had conducted public meetings for citizens to hear about the convention security measures. I attended none of these meetings, but gained a general understanding from a symposium held by the ACLU attended by a CSPD representative. Another CSPD commander turned up on Tuesday May 12 at the monthly ACLU board meeting to apprise our members again of the city’s plans. It was here we learned that there were two “Free Speech Zones” to be made available to the public. Of particular interest were the now graciously added grassy almond shaped areas adjacent the main steps to the World Arena. From this briefing it was decided to relocate our banners to those parts, as they afforded visibility to all delegates attending the convention, not just those coming from the hotels along Geyser Drive.

On Saturday we discovered that those spots were not being offered to us. And this was the source of the confusion. Despite being reminded that a roomful of ACLU members and lawyers had witnessed what the convention organizers had purportedly offered to be public areas, the police held steadfast that no such close-up access would be given. There would have been no confusion on Saturday if an advance agreement from either side had not been presumed. There would have been less disappointment on our part if an area accorded free speech rights had not been perceived to have been withdrawn.

PROTEST BY FOREKNOWLEDGE OF PERMISSION ONLY
The application of a Free Speech Zone was almost farcical. Police Officers stood at the edge of the World Arena property checking for credentials. Helpers beside them called down the line, warning that no one without credentials would be allowed unto the property. When it came my turn to be asked, I answered that I had none. They were already telling me I could not enter when I was able to get a question in edgewise. I asked: “what about the Free Speech Zone?” They answered: “Oh, you’re here for the Free Speech Zone” and they waved me through. Without a description of where it was, or that it did not extend to the limit of the police tape. An ordinary public would not have known to ask to enter the area, nor about its limits.
Police tape extended toward but did not include areas 8 and 9

FREEDOM OF SPEECH
Of course there would be no problem at all if we hadn’t collectively relinquished the principle of Freedom of Speech. Why has it become so critical to public safety to shield people from each other’s speech? It used to be Sticks and Stones from which we needed police protection.

SURVEILLANCE
The extent of the security measures were leading all to believe that a personage of important political stature would be paying the convention a visit. By five in the morning all the street corners were manned by multiple motorcycle patrolmen. Suited men in dark SUVs were conducting security sweeps into the wooded hillside. Traffic signs on the interstate were warning drivers not to stop or slow along the shoulder. Police vehicles of all stripes were patrolling the parking lots, junior policemen were positioned in pickup trucks hauling coolers full of bottled water. When we arrived at the parking lot, unmarked vehicles converged upon us but exchanged information with each other without having to get out to address us.

Later in the day, Mark and I returned to the Free Speech Zone so that he could videotape my account of what had happened. Another of our party watched as men atop the roof of the Hampton Inn followed us though spotting scopes and pointed what appeared to be parabolic listening devices in our direction. None of which could be considered excessive for security precautions at such an event, although pretty clearly our protests have shown themselves to be of little threat. It would seem the purpose of the exercise Saturday was to get in some practice.

Gold Hill blows arsenic and lead our way

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Winds have been blowing up dust from Gold Hill, in part due to a two month discontinuance of keeping damp the exposed 210-acre toxic mound. Neighbors are complaining, but have no fear, developer Bob Willard told the Westside Pioneer “I take responsibility for that.” That’s great. If years later health statistics point to an abnormal concentration of debilitating illness due to arsenic or lead, we’ll know where to knock.

Justice delayed is justice denied. Profit now at all cost later.

The State of Colorado authorized the Gold Hill development on a “brownfiled” site, the mound of tailings from the old gold-mill. Their proviso was that particular care be taken to, among other measures, keep the freshly disturbed tailings from being inhaled by the city’s residents.

For some reason, perhaps owing to the housing market financing problems, Willard decided to forgo the water trucks until someone complained. Oh, is that how enforcement of state instructions work? Open the can of worms, whether you have the means to stick around or not, don’t bother about the lid.

It looks as if the state will bear some fault for this too. But meanwhile the developer tells us he will bear full responsibility for his lack of diligence to safeguard community health. Is he planning to abscond to Paraguay with his takings before we all start falling sick?

Meth lab bust on undeveloped westside

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Hazmat truck, fire truck and police cruisers surround meth lab on Colorado Springs west side
Westside traffic was impeded Wednesday by a methamphetamine lab cleanup on Colorado Avenue. Police and fire trucks surrounded the old house while firemen removed hazardous substances in cardboard boxes. Likely the only recourse for this clapboard house will be demolition. Meth labs are fast-tracks for slumlords to flip their properties to developers.

Wouldn’t it stand to reason that landlords should be penalized for taking in drug-dealing tenants? Otherwise, what better way to demo your property. It’s legal arson. You write off, or file a claim, and rebuild to gentrification standards.

The real meth lab epidemic is several years past, but don’t discount the easy tool the hazmat condemnation provides for property owners eager to shed themselves of low-rent digs. Below is a map of previous lab-domiciles that required destruction.

Meth Lab seizures in 2003

Waste Management Inc.

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We’ve all seen those garbage trucks going around in circles, with big signs painted on them that say that their landfills (dumps) are pristine centers for wildlife! Such an ethical and ecologically concerned company is Waste Management! This below is what the CEO of this fine company pulls down in salary with his BS about ‘Keeping America Beautiful’ and other such Waste Management Inc. PR.

David P. Steiner
Chief Executive Officer
Waste Management Inc.

The proxy statement for Waste Management Inc. uses the new SEC executive compensation rules.

In 2006, David P. Steiner raked in $5,601,287 in total compensation according to the SEC. However, according to the AFL-CIO’s calculation method*, he raked in $6,541,198 in total 2006 compensation.

With all the pro Green rhetoric coming out about subjects like the supposed Fort Carson ‘sustainability’ projects, etc., it pays to keep a sceptical eye on these corporate Green cons. Interestingly, Waste Management Inc. supposedly promotes the FreeCycle Movement. You can see how effective that is by judging how little actually gets recycled here in Colorado Springs where those Waste Management garbage trucks roam the streets boasting of how ‘Green’ they are.

If they are so Green, then why haven’t they used their influence to get the Colorado Springs City Council to come up with a real recycling program? Worth mentioning, too, is that their HQ is Houston, Texas, which is hardly the pristine center of environmentalism. In fact, that city is a toxic dump.

Oh, and if you want to go out to one of those ‘wildlife refuges’ built by Waste Management Inc’s fine endeavours?… then check out this one in California. Wetlands Landfill Expansion

Solitary confinement blocks for Ft Carson

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See more precast prison cells headed for PCMS at csaction.orgMark Lewis has been sent photographs taken by an alert Southeast Coloradan, of trucks laden with strange cargo for the Ft Carson PCMS. Strapped to each truck bed are several self contained units, of what appear to be modular living quarters, if your idea of a studio apartment is a single room, five foot by ten. On one end of each there’s a window in the form of a single narrow slit and at the other end a door with a similar window and a small utility door. If you were to imagine a place to conceal the Man in the Iron Mask in 21st Century prefab construction material, this would be it. The modular design looks like they’re made to fit into a honeycomb, reached by way of metal grates.
Windows resembled these.
A recent executive order has cleared the way for military bases to house civilian detention facilities. I imagined barracks like the WWII internment camps. These accommodations look more suited to Guantanamo.

Tasers in the hands of human nature

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I happened upon videos of cops tasering arrestees. Gruesome scenes of obvious sadistic indulgence. Sometimes prolonged and repeated.

While the taser has become a popular tool for the police to deal with uncooperative subjects, it’s hard not to see pure sadism in the guise of standard operating procedure. The police bark their orders (usually, “put your hands behind your back”) and give a warning about using the taser. If still no compliance, zap.

Rather, ZAAAAAAAAAAP. Then the officer repeats his instruction. If the subject is still dealing with the pain, or is disoriented by having fallen, or cannot register the policeman’s command, no matter, ZAAAP again. More howls, more uncomprehending, ZAAAP, ZAAAP, until the officer deems it safe enough to sit on the subject and pull the subject’s hands behind the back himself to apply the handcuffs.

Try laying stomach down on your bed and raising your arms to clasp your hands behind your back. Of course you can do it, but it’s very easy to feel like you cannot. Imagine if you are recovering from the pain of the electroshock, or you’re bruised from hitting the ground, or perhaps you are disoriented from alcohol, as in many of the cases.

While tasers do appear to be reducing our peace officers’ exposure to physical contact with suspected criminals, did we mean to remove the human, humane element of their task? We didn’t hire robots for the job, for example. We probably intended, and we pay police accordingly, to exercise some elbow grease.

The job description for a police officer must include apprehending suspected lawbreakers humanely. We don’t authorize them to shoot suspects or drive Mack trucks into them, even if some law-enforcement researcher was to discover a non-lethal way that could be done.

With tasers, aren’t we touching on the abrogation of the right to due process under law? A person is innocent until proven guilty, we all know that, but it applies here because a person suspected of a crime must not be punished before their day in court. Police maintain that the taser is not a means of punishment, but instead is a non-lethal method to induce compliance with recalcitrant subjects. Putting aside the already numerous taser fatalities, the taser would have to be non-painful as well to comply with the 14th Amendment. Viewing the videos, it’s plain to see that tasers are excruciatingly painful and are being used by policemen as torture devices. Even to threaten to use the device is torture. Torture and the threat of torture is banned by international convention.

I must admit a cynical enjoyment of some of these taser videos. The large majority of subjects not cooperating with the police are drunk. In these videos, they were pulled over for drunk driving or for a domestic disturbance influenced by alcohol. I sympathize with the officers who cannot get through to those people, especially when they are derisive and combative.

The drunks try to avoid the commands they’re given using tactics of delay or distract or abuse. Of course, how much responsibility should they bear for behavior not entirely under their own control? When tasered a drunk writhes in pain like everyone else, but you wonder if he will have any memory of it later. Perhaps this plays a part in an officer’s thinking. The drunk, lost in a chemical state, is suspected of jeopardizing the safety of others, but can be judged on the spot for trying the officer’s patience, the taser becomes a means of instant payback. Traditionally, excessive force would have served this function, but at least the policeman would have had to weigh his interest in exerting the effort. The taser makes it too easy to make the wrong decision.

I wouldn’t trust myself with a taser, I’m too jaded. I already lament the social plague that is alcoholism. There are of course many root problems which our society needs to address. But so also, the alcoholic’s behavior is sometimes vehemently proclaimed to be voluntary. Our having to deal with the adversity and endangerment which alcoholics bring is too often not voluntary. In these videos, I take a vicarious pleasure in stopping that drunk. As long as drunks want to subject the rest of us to their drunkenness, and won’t show contrition until morning, we’ll want to indulge our equal and opposite discomfort and Zap ’em.

The Doctor’s Plot revisited

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In 1953, Stalin launched his ‘defense’ against Jewish doctors he said were involved in a plot to kill him. Today, with Britain’s Labor Party now thoroughly discredited for being a poodle, barking alongside Bush always in support of the US occupation of Iraq, there comes another doctor’s plot.

A plot to show the world that TERROR is a really big deal to justify spending trillions of dollars on fighting against it. A plot led by a renegade religion! But this time it is the Muslims and not the Jews.

Jews are out (or is that in?) and Muslims are in (or is that out?) for ‘plots’ to be formed around. So we seem to have a Muslim doctors plot instead of Jewish doctors making headlines in the news. Go figure. There is another evil race, culture, and religion to justify wrapping oneself in the British and US flags with, like once Germans wrapped themselves in their flags under Hitler’s guidance. And like the Jewish doctors of the ’50s, these Muslim doctors of the present seem only capable of burning themselves alive with their nefarious manipulations. How convenient.

And what is it with airplanes and airports? Are we to believe that it is not our Homeland Security bureaucracy that has an obsession (to keep their cush ‘security’ jobs loafing around) with airports and flying, but Muslims? I don”t think so. They don;t have billions of dollars invested in running around in circles like our ‘security’ burrocrats and underlings do. They will attack in other ways than using airplanes to fly into buildings next time along.

I know some stupid doctors in this world, but to believe that Muslims docs are involved in running trucks filled with flammable liquids into airport areas is just too stupid to be believable. It is much more likely a ‘terror story’ to be spoon fed to stupid kids developed by cops. Don’t be a stupid kid, hear? The fetish for airports comes from ‘our’ side, not theirs. Green, Yellow, Red… it’s all baloney for the gullible. And the modern day version of the doctor’s plot is for the gullible, too. Tony Blair needs to be in jail, and his successor probably needs to follow him quite quick for this current campaign of fabricated bullshit. WOMD anybody?

The supposed Muslim doctors’ plot to kill us all seems to follow the same plot line that Stalin used to blame Jewish doctor’s for all the problems of the world, including a supposed effort to assassinate him. Paranoia, religous hatred, stupid us-first nationalism, and lots of lies make up the basic recipe for ‘doctors plots’. Oh, and today one must throw in a dash of airport, too.

America’s Colombian friends

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Horrrible testimony is coming out daily in Colombia about the American government’s Colombian friends, the Paramilitary death squads.

All of Colombia is following the continual unfolding of new scandal about the Colombian government and military’s deep connections with the paramilitaries. Check out the video some even though it is in Spanish. Your tax monies went to help make these atrocities happen, so don’t hide your eyes and ears away. Take a look.

America made this level of total criminality possible by funding the Colombian military for decades now. The techniques used by the death squads organized by the Colombian military rival the worst crimes of the Japanese and the Nazis during WW2. Still, our US corporate media keeps it all quite hidden away from the American public, and most Americans still continue to think that the US government is only there fighting drugs, if they think about Colombia at all.
…………
from ‘El Tiempo’ below which is the New York Times of Colombia….
…………
…Villalba assures that for the cutting up learning they used peasants who brought up together during the occupations of neighboring towns. “They were older people taken on trucks, alive, tied”, he described. The victims arrived to the estate on topped trucks. They were taken down with their hands tied and moved to a room, where they remained locked for several days, waiting for the training to start.

Then the “bravery instruction” came up: people were separated in four or five groups “and there they were cut into pieces”, Villalba told during the deposition. “The instructor told me: ‘You stand up here and secures the one who cuts’. Every time a town was occupied and someone is going to be cut, the ones doing that job must be provided with security”.

Men and women were taken out the rooms on their underwear. Still with their hands tied, they were taken to the place where the instructor awaited to start the first recommendations: “The instructions were to take off their arms, their head, to cut them alive. They came out crying and asked us not to hurt them, [they said] they had a family”.

Villalba describes the process: “The people were opened from the chest to the belly to take out the guts, the innards. Their legs, their arms, their heads were ripped off, with a machete or a knife. The rest, their remains, [were taken out] by hand. We, who were on instruction, took out the intestines”.

The training was compulsory, according to him, to “test [their] courage and learn how to disappear people”. During the month and a half Francisco Villalba says he was in the course, he saw cutting instructions three times. “They chose the students to participate. Once, one of them refused to do it. ‘Doble cero’ [a paramilitary chief] stood up and told him: ‘Come here, I can do it’. Then he ordered to cut him up. They made me to cut one girl’s arm. She was already taken her head and one leg out. She asked them not to do it, because she had two children”.

The bodies were taken to common graves at the same place, La 35, where it is estimated 400 people were buried….

much more, including video of the undercovering of the 10,000 PLUS bodies at El Tiempo.

Smell Paso Texas

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Antique postcard of Franklin Canal in El Paso TexasMexico is falling apart worse than I remember. I used to haunt downtown El Paso/slash/Juarez. The two cities are really one, but Juarez is about 6 times bigger and the poor side of town, and there are armed guards keeping the poor from the rich side of town.

The colonias described, they are on this side of the border as well. And just as illegal.

In 1991 there was a story on one of the El Paso stations, on the video news, a guy emptied one of those honey wagons, the Port-o-potty emptying trucks, into the canal on the mexican side. There are two main canals, the Franklin canal as it is called in El Paso and downstream, and the (don’t dear God hold me to this name) La Victoria canal on the Mexican side. Mind you, this kind of literally “shit” goes on everyday. Only this particular day there was a Mexican news crew hiding in the bushes.

They filmed him for forty-five minutes nonchalantly emptying the crap into the PEOPLES DAMN DRINKING WATER. Then the cops moved in and arrested him AFTER aaaaarrrrrrrrggggggggg. Then they shot some scenes where women and children were getting their water downstream from the incident. To show us how noble the government was in protecting them I suppose. Of course, it might have been a little bit nobler if they had gone up to the people and at least warned them that they were drinking feces. Guess they just figured they would watch it on the TeeVee news in their cardboard shacks which have no TeeVee, which is kinda good because they don’t have any electricity to run a TeeVee anyway.

But in downtown El Paso, you can go to Alameda street and actually just look across the creek, in its concrete-lined bed, looks like a drainage ditch actually, with the concertina-wire topped 12 foot cyclone fence, and see the maquila sweatshops. There are supposedly designed to be modern and convenient and comfortable and all, but the strangest thing about them is that there, a mere hundred yards from the line where things like OSHA and the EPA are such bad wicked naughty whiners that they actually insist on workplace safety(sometimes) and environmental protection (sometimes) as I said dear friends a hundred yards away… in these wonderful modern factories and warehouses, the other side of PRI, used to be the dominant party there, the Unions, are forbidden to organize, and since every worker in Mexico pre-nafta was a card carrying member of the labor unions, the people working there are ordered to disavow their union membership.

You know, I would almost bet that some of those workers were in the video of the women and children drinking shit out of an irrigation canal.

Oddly enough, there was a cholera epidemic that year. as in most years. The epidemic was spread to this side of the border as well. In colonias on the Franklin canal.

Saying grace

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Is grace recited before meals anymore? It seems the bigger the dinner, the more preparation or participation that goes into the repast, the greater is the sense that something is missing if we omit the prayer to dive into our food. A private reflection might be payed during the erstwhile silent moment but a word spoken of spiritual thanks seems no longer apropos in this secular thinking child’s age. Religiosity abounds still of course, but it is separated less from state and education than from the other aspects of daily life with which it also conflicts, such as buying and selling, lending and consuming, trading upon the disadvantage of others. End of the lineI too wonder if giving thanks for our abundance need be directed to God or divine provenance in appreciation of our predatory advantage, before a meal or after. For myself I have found a better occasion.

Driving on the highway every once in awhile I encounter a cattle truck, the trailer sides simple sheet metal grates behind which one can see the fur of livestock. You can only see the bodies standing steadily at the edge in semi darkness and apparent silence. I search to catch their eyes but the metal bands seem positioned to obscure our visibility or more probably theirs.

I used to entertain fantasies of derailing their voyage, stopping the driver to offer the animals a reprieve, however futile. But we’ve got a pretty principled meat processing company on our side of town, and I have come to accept the inevitability that mankind wants to domesticate some mammals to eat them.

When you see those large cattle trucks in non-rural areas, there’s little question as to where they are going. It is rare that cattle would be traded between ranches, or taken to the veterinarian, or sent to a State Fair to be exhibited as 4-H pets, or being put to pasture, as happens to horses no longer either. As much as you would like to think otherwise, the cattle in those trailers are being delivered to the slaughterhouse. When you see the unfortunate cows, they are only hours -perhaps minutes- from the ramp which leads to the aboitoir, to a violent ignoble death at the hands of a harried production line.

I remember reading about traditions surrounding the slaughter of pigs. The human-like cries of pigs have always wreaked psychic damage on the men who have to kill them. Some farming villages have ceremonies to ritualize the process. In many cases, a single person is given the responsibility of dealing the fatal blow. The Kosher tradition of food purity comes not from concern for regulating the quality of a meat source, but insuring rather that the animal was properly killed. Again, not by public health standards but spiritual.

When I find myself passing a truck carrying cows or domestic buffalo to their demise, I try to linger beside the trailer for a moment, long enough to give a thought to the beings inside. But I lack for what to say. To hope that their death will be as painless as possible, to pray for their understanding, to give thanks for their stoic, if involuntary, contribution, to thank them.

Excuse your blind spot

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Warning spotted on truck: “YOU ARE IN MY BLIND SPOT.”

I found myself on the lee side of a passing semi-truck the other day. On the passenger side of the cab, where the driver couldn’t see me, I read a sign in capital letters: You are in my blind spot.” Yeah?

It reminded me of the sign you used to see in restaurants above the coat racks, “not responsible for lost items.” Actually not true. If the hats and coats were not in line of sight from where the clientele were seated, the restaurant was completely responsible, the disclaimer not-withstanding. Wouldn’t we all love a t-shirt that read “not accountable for my actions.”

A great percentage of highway fatalities attest to the danger large 18-wheelers pose for passenger cars. To see a sticker admonish the smaller vehicle to take greater care is simply insulting. Mind your blind spot? How about you find a truck manufacturer to make your high-velocity lethal mass come equipped without a blind spot? Install a camera for instance. Make sure you can keep an eye on where you’re swinging that colossal hard body. Until you can get by without our assistance, stay off the road. You may not insist on ambulating with a blind spot mortal to others. A blind spot for the safety of civilians in automobiles is the blind spot you have.

And what of the signs: “this vehicle makes wide turns?” Out of your designated lane is what you mean. Can I put a sign on my car reserving my use of the left lane to make a right turn when I’m inclined? Hardly. Design a truck which plays well with others. You can start by abiding by the rules of the road, endangering no passersby. Use smaller trucks if you have to, but don’t give me your signs.

“Warning to trucks: driver of this vehicle protected by lawyer, give wide berth please. Thank you.”

Come tell Cheney not to torture!

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Meet at Lake Avenue and Second StreetCome protest Vice President Dick Cheney’s campaign stop at the Broadmoor. This is your chance to tell him you don’t think the US decision to use torture is a “no-brainer.” (Read about one of the first US female casualties in Iraq. A recent FOIA has revealed her death was a suicide, covered-up. Her motive? She did not want to participate in US methods of torture.)

CSAction Activist Alert from Mark Lewis:
On Friday, November 3 at the Broadmoor Hotel, “The Dick” cheney will come to do a fund raiser for lamborn, who is close to loosing the 5th congressional district seat to Fawcett. The supporters will start arriving at 4 pm (according to the local GOP office) and must be inside for the security sweep at 6pm just before cheney arrives up Lake Avenue.

We need to be there in force to “welcome” cheney (that’s Mr. Dick to you) with orange hunting vests, signs about halliburton, war profiteers, Abu Ghraib, POWs, Gitmo, Iraq, “Who would Jesus torture?”, maybe a “water board” display?

Maybe the same location as the 2004 NATO protest at 2nd and Lake, where the motorcade will have to slow for the “round about” and where there is parking in the church lot?

The sat trucks will go live at 5 for TV coverage, so we need to be in place at least by then. Spread the word.

The Old Colorado City fire of ‘02

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December 5, 2002, a personal account, see Waycott Opera House for media photographs.

7 AM
Early on Tuesday morning in sleepy Old Colorado City, a Channel 13 news crew met with Sue Seabolt in her Hand Carved Candles Shop to do a TV spot about candle safety. After they wrapped up, everyone went to breakfast together.

Fire Inspectors report that a candle was left burning.

9 AM
Bruce Reid, passer-by, was driving to work along Colorado Avenue at about nine and saw dark smoke coming from a vent on the sidewalk in front of the candle shop. He wondered what kind of toxic material they might be burning, did they think no one would notice the smoke before business hours? He pulled over to investigate (and maybe call the EPA.)

As he parked, the window of the adjacent Glass Blowers Shop blew out. Now it was apparent this was a fire and he began alerting people in nearby businesses to call 911.

WAYCOTT BASEMENT
Meanwhile managers at Meadow Muffins had already called 911. They saw smoke coming into their basement from an underground vent the bar shares with the shops next door.

That vent has always been thought to be part of the infamous tunnel system under Colorado Avenue. It dates back to the turn of the century when respectable residents didn’t want to be seen crossing the street to visit the taverns and brothels on the disreputable south side of the street.

2ND FLOOR
Two floors above, Rusty and Steve of PRODUCERS GROUP were being overwelmed by the smoke coming into their video production office. Their main entrance is on the east side of the Waycot Building, above the Glass Blowers Shop, with stairs that descend through the now burning building. They tested the door handle, it was hot. When they opened the door they were pushed back by a surge of heat. The stairway was on fire. They figured out they would have to go out through the back.

On their way out the two ascended to my door at the third floor. They knocked and shouted, hoping I would hear them. Eventually they gave up and wanted to check outside to see what was happening. On the street they ran into Bruce Reid, they told him, yes there was a third person still in the building. Bruce climbed the stairs to try again.

3RD FLOOR
I was asleep, nearly. I’d gone to bed at 6am though I meant to be nursing a flu. Things needed doing and anyway I intended to convalesce until noon.

At 9am I had an unplanned call from a friend. I answered him vaguely, determined to resume my sleep. As I lay into my pillow I heard a very faint sound: banging noises, coming from far away.

“What IS that?” I wondered. Banging, buzzing. A continuous barrage. Was someone BANGING on my door? I listened until it could not have been anything else. I threw on a robe and went to answer. What did they WANT? I made my way to the door, noticing several curious smoky odors.

I opened the door to see a stranger heading back down the stairs. He tripped back as he spun to address me. I noticed quite a bit of smoke in the stairwell.

He shouted to me “Man, you’ve got to get out, the building next door is on fire!”

Probably I said “What?”

He repeated, quite excited “There’s a fire next door, you’ve got to get out!”

“Alright, alright. Calm down” I told him. Who was this stranger in my stairwell, on my side of a supposedly locked street level door?

“No problem” I assured him, “I’ll come down. Don’t worry. I’m the only one up here. ” He ran down as I closed the door.

As I walked around my place looking for something to wear, the smoke became much more pronounced. It was seeping up through the floor. I looked through the east windows but didn’t see anything. I put on the nearest clothes and grabbed a jacket and my camera to go investigate. If there was any kind of a fire wouldn’t I have heard fire trucks already? I descended the stairs, the smoke was getting bad. Hmm.

ON THE STREET
When I got to the street I saw Rusty and Steve standing on the corner next to a fire truck. When I reached them I saw there were four trucks already, maybe more. A crowd had assembled. Across the street I saw the stranger who had helped me.

It looked like a small fire inside the Glass Blowers Shop, smoke, no flames, and the firemen didn’t apear too excited. I took a couple of pictures and then my battery died. I hadn’t brought a spare.

I hadn’t grabbed my phone, my wallet or anything. Suddenly flames emerged from the roof of the small shops. The flames rose high against the east wall of the Waycott Building. Now I could tell the firemen weren’t going to let me back up. As the morning went on it became clear that there were going to be a lot of pictures of this fire.

ANXIETY
The initial inactivity of a number of the firemen, which I dismissed as their knowing-what-they-are-doing, turned out to be closer related to a lack of water. The nearby fire hydrant was found dry. “Why aren’t they spraying water?” my father asked. What began with a candle became a three alarm fire.

Worse than the feeling that not enough was being done, was when the firemen started running around, that’s when you’d begin to worry that the fire was about to pull ahead.

THE FIRE
The worrisome aspect for the Waycott Building was that the second floor entrance was acting much like an oven hood for the fire. We’d find later that the upper floors would serve as a smoke stack for this blaze.

We could see smoke escaping from second story windows left open on the west side of the building. I congratulated myself that the third floor windows were all closed, perhaps reducing the effect of a draft. Later I would lament that as a result all the smoke had nowhere to go. It thickened into every corner and soot simply piled unto itself.

We watched a team of firemen ascend to the second floor to keep the fire out. They had to cross the floor in total darkness. There was a rumor they’d gotten lost. They kept the fire from coming into the building. The water from their hoses accumulated in the Meadow Muffins basement.

I’d like to write more, about the third floor window frame catching fire, how the firemen had to knock it out and then had to probe into the ceiling to assure the fire hadn’t lept there. For now I better jump to the aftermath.

STEWARDSHIP
First a note about the fish.

When you’ve been in a fire, after the fire is out, you get to ask a firefighter to go fetch anything from inside which you might need until you are granted access yourself. Phone, checkbook, a change of clothes, keys. I had to draw a map of the floor plan and try to remember where each item might have last been mislaid. An interesting challenge.

Someone remembered the fish. Two angel fish and a tough little silver guy who’s survived bigger challenges. The tank water would have absorbed a lot of smoke.

The personal-items-retriever came back with everything, including the fish. They looked like they were having trouble but the fireman said the male angel had faught him off. A good sign or a last exertion that might prove fatal. Gianmichele and my father ran the bucket up the street to the aquarium store. But the poor fish didn’t recover.

A friend of mine once described the responsibility of owning a rare book or antique. In the end we are only its steward. A rare possession is ours to keep safe until we pass it on to another. A book is yours to read, to cherish, or resell at a profit if that’s what you’re doing. It’s not yours to destroy.

Looking upon the fire I didn’t feel like I’d been very responsible.

AFTERMATH
Thank you for the emails and calls of support. Yes, the servers were down, due to what Gianmichele labeled our pyrotechnical difficulties, thus emails were bouncing and the websites were not accessible.

I’m fine. I’m sure I would have been just fine, but I’m thankful that I was rousted by Bruce Reid at my door instead of facing firemen in gas masks coming through smoke toward my bed. That might have been too exciting.

The guys on the second floor didn’t fare very well. Their offices were damaged by the heat and smoke. Meadow Muffins will be closed for several weeks to repair the water and smoke damge. The First National Bank building which houses the Michael Garman businesses are facing similar repairs. And of course the building between us which housed four little craft stores is gone.

Comparatively the third floor suffered little damage. There is soot everywhere, whatever was face up is ruined, but the books in the curtained area seem to be unscathed, it appears they were screened from the smoke. Everything’s fine, relatively, just smelly.

How smelly is hard to say, after a while you can’t tell any difference. We’re laundering everything three times, but everywhere I visit I smell like I came back from sitting on the wrong side of a campfire.

Reprinted from Waycott Opera House.

Bookman flooded

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Guess what’s new at Bookman today? The entire back room has two inches of red mud on the floor and seeping up the boxes! The rear quarter of the main room is soaked and red with red rock. All the paperback on the floor, from the P’s of Fiction, through Psychology, through Anthropology and Theatre, to somewhere in History are soaked like sponges. All the magazines standing in folders likewise syphoned the water straight up.

At seven thirty this morning, a water main broke behind Bookman, exactly underneath the two trailers. By 8:30 the city water department reached me. They needed me to move the trucks before they could begin repairs. I met Dad down there.

Water was flowing out of the pavement. The asphalt was sagging just ahead of the rear wheels of the trailers. We’d have to pull them forward, over the hole, held up by the water pressing up from the broken main.

So the water people refused to turn off the water until I’d gotten the trucks moved, meanwhile the water was washing away more dirt and creating a bigger hole. Imagine everyone from the city and all the neighboring businesses watching and waiting on us and we’re waiting on a driver.

I saw the mud up on the back sidewalk and asked Dad if he’d seen any damage inside. He said no. When I saw we had to disconnect the power cord to the truck I went inside to unlock the back door. I took off my shoes to keep from getting the carpet wet. Walking in the dark I suddenly felt the carpet was squishy. I slopped barefoot through to the back door, opened it and greeted Dad.

The driver was good. He pulled the first one forward quickly over the hole. The second trailer he backed up and ran the tractor backwards over the hole. That one was the trailer Justin had packed real full and was the heaviest. Mike was taking Mpegs of the action, a luckily there was none. It could have been amazing and we would have needed a crane.

Randee arrived by this time and draped toilet paper across the aisles and wrote on them: Do Not Cross, like a police barrier. A customer went home to get a squeegy which he’d used when he had flooding. Meanwhile Dad and I repacked the graffiti truck so that the contents could handle the long drive to the storage yard. We put it right in front of Longs. Margot of Felix Realty took this occasion to intone that she didn’t ever want the trailers back.

So the water’s off for everyone. The dry cleaner is freaking, Pizza Hut closed for the day, and we don’t care, we don’t let anyone use the bathroom! They’ve got a back-hoe digging to clear some work space for replacing the pipe. It’s going to take a huge paving job because the dirt is eroded along the edge of the parking lot clear down to past Longs.

Well that’s the story so far. Mike took pictures for insurance and gawking reasons, meanwhile he and I were trying to repair the Toons computer, it was still down. It’ll be up, new and improved, making regular backups, by 7pm ETA. Mom helped out quite a bit and brought shovels and lunch.