Walking home last night after work, I tried to stay on the sunny side of the street as much as possible. Even though the weather is warming up, there’s still a chill in the air and keeping in the sun makes for a more pleasant stroll through the city.
My mobile sunbathing technique took me along King East and down Front Street, keeping to the south side. As I was heading west, I noticed clumps of people here and there up ahead of me, all looking up. As my gaze followed theirs, I was surprised to see a huge plume of smoke in the distance, just beyond the CN Tower and towards the lakeshore. At this point I had no idea what was happening, other than the obvious fact that a large fire was underway. Almost immediately, sirens started to sound and fire crews began to speed by in their trucks.
I took a picture. Actually, I took a few. It was the least I could do as my more dramatic side kicked in and I began to imagine this day going down in Canadian history as our very own 9/11!
Thankfully the terrorist scenario turned out not to be the case. When I got to my local pub closer to home, I found out that the top floor of a condo on Queen’s Quay had caught fire and the resulting plume was what we all saw. The smoke, however, was quite short-lived as the city’s emergency services went into action!
There were reports of no fatalities and only two injuries in the fire.
