Mrs. O'leary's Cow

It all began a couple of hours ago when the drone of the helicopters slowly started. One at first, and then another and finally a swarm sweeping across the bits of sky visible from my 6th floor cubicle. The last time this happened was when a van full of prisoners being transferred from jail to court crashed through a window into a western wear store at the corner of 4th and Houston, a block away from my office. So something was up.

I went to the windows facing north to find endless streams of police tape, dozens of fire trucks, a platoon of firemen and all sorts of people wandering around looking confused.

Downtown Fort Worth is on fire.

Perhaps not on the scale of Chicago or London, downtown Fort Worth did see something called a "gas surge", a rapid pressure change in the natural gas lines feeding parts of downtown, which triggered several gas leaks and over a dozen small fires in buildings covering four square blocks of downtown. The fires were small and contained and extinguished quickly, but you should see the magnitude of the emergency response when fires are reported in numerous buildings covering several blocks in a downtown district. It is really quite impressive with every unit in the area rolling into downtown. Many buildings were evacuated because of the fires and suspected gas leaks, leaving many office workers with nothing to do but wander around since their vehicles were parked in garages that were also sealed off with police tape. I suspect many were milling around hoping that they weren't milling around the base of the right building at the wrong time.

One of the most damaging hailstorms on record. One of the few tornados to cut through a major urban city center. Now a fire which could have potentially consumed several blocks of downtown. It seems that downtown cowtown is a nexus for trouble.

Hell's Half Acre indeed.