at 10:59am sunday morning my cell phone rang.  jamie nasiaka   called to inform me the building behind our  warehouse "cataclysmic megashear ranch studio's" was on fire, that he'd been working inside when he realized smoke from fire nearby, looked out the upstairs back windows and saw flames leaping out of the roof.  "first I pissed my pants, then I ran for my life".

engines and ladder trucks were rolling onto the scene, and jamie let a crew into our building where they chopped their way into the buildings behind and next door, and set up two hose locations from the upstairs great room windows.

I rolled up at noon, and it was already a four alarm fire, with five ladder trucks training water monitors from above, and another three/four/five crew positions.  Lori told me they could see the smoke from home in north oakland.  the plume was giant.  driving over the bridge I contemplated everything in my studio, all the tools and equipment, all my photo negatives, 25 years worth, boxes of old letters and writings I've been trying to look through.  most of everything that I would generally wave a stick at and call my livlihood and art portfolio -- as well as a place where many of my best friends and most respected colleagues work and play, where i've been working for 10-12 years.  as others rolled up from this place or that, rubbing sleep out of their eyes, they relayed the same stories.  maybe this was the day all the change came you'd been contemplating the last year or two.  maybe this was going to be the day we said good bye to everything in the past.

all day they would just seem to  get the fire contained and under control, black smoke turning grey with the filthy steam from the hoses, and then another building would explode into flames.  In all, seven warehouse buildings burned down, directly behind and next door to the ranch.  for hours we watches the crews charge in, and then run back out of these structures.  we watched smoke billow out of our roll top door as crews ran in and retreated through the afternoon.  a huge amount of water was sprayed onto the top and back of out building, and we feared damages from that and smoke could be truly cataclysmic.  some of our population of artist came to watch, six pack and camera's in hand, others just went on with their bike rides with their kids, or started a new painting at home, anything but come down and see what was happening. 

it was a hell of a wildfire and it burned for hour after hour after hour.  when we could finally peek into the space from outside, the bottom floor was under 3" of water, with waterfalls pouring down through the upstairs floor where the crew was hosing from our back windows.  the whole inside was thick with smoke.  the old wood building that used to be the incense next door to us exploded into flames, we watched the roof collapse and then the whole thing just evaporate in a cloud of ash.  then the steel building next to that erupted into flames.  word on the street was a weed farm behind us is where the fire started.  illegal weed farm in a 120 year old wooden tinderbox with 60 year old wiring.  stupid people.  whole bunch of peoples livelihood and property was totally destroyed so some idiot can light up a bowl.

when we finally let ourselves in, we were astounded to find almost no serious damage.  a couple studio's downstairs were soaked, so we rallied up a push to pump out the water and dry off their projects and equipment.  out the back window looked like a fucking stanley kubrick movie, just charred ruble , like the london fire bombings 1944.  totally hellish.  then there we were, an island of calm in the ocean of total mayhem and destruction.

so the next few days, what i'd been planning on as days I could disappear into the shop and make stuff that's been waiting all these weeks for me -- I'll be there cleaning up, airing out, fixing broken things, replacing all the windows the fire crews smashed out.  Instead of being the day I said good bye to everything in the past, embraced change for change had come from out of the ether to devour my indifference and  spiritual & emotional paralysis -- after the huge dragon of hell devoured half the entire block around us -- life would be exactly the same.

fucking crazy.

and almost incomprehensible . . .

so, I post these images, and make the kids sandwiches, and ready for an afternoon down at Van Dyke street.