Firestarter

AS IF IDIOTS WITH MOONINITE LITE BRITES WEREN'T ENOUGH
I am beginning to think that I have some latent powers of destruction that are now blossoming within me as I go about life unknowingly. That, or I brought one helluva batch of bad luck to the North Shore when I moved here. Anyway, these little minor disasters keep popping up around here.

It started the night before Thanksgiving when a chemical plant in nearby Danvers exploded and flattened an entire residential area. I had been living here literally for only a couple of months when this happened. It didn't make national news headlines since miraculously no one was killed (not sensational enough for the media, I guess) but trust me: this was and still is the talk of the town up here. The place looked like a bomb went off, and it certainly sounded like it too. It woke me up at 3 in the morning and had everyone in my house convinced that a plane had crashed in Salem. It also badly damaged the neighboring marina, which brings us to yesterday.

Last night, somehow unbeknownst to me, an entire fucking marina burnt to the ground not a block away from my house on the other side of the House of Seven Gables. I didn't even know that this place was there, it is so tucked away. Thank God the firefighters got there right away and contained the blaze extremely effectively so it didn't spread to my apartment or worse, the Gables (Heaven forbid!). And no one was hurt either. I cannot stress to you enough how close this place is to where I am standing right now typing this. I am completely baffled as to how I missed out on the action; I got home right when they were in the thick of fighting the fire, but I simply walked inside and made dinner. I didn't notice any sirens or blue lights or leaping orange flames at all. So much for my wonderful powers of observation; my Spidey-sense must have been turned off for the evening. I will have to check out the site tomorrow morning on my way to work.

Moral of the story: All I know is, if I'm the owner of the marina up in Marblehead, I'm thinking it's probably a good time to take out some extra insurance.