職場で仕事をしていると、カミサンからLINEが。 なにげなく開いてみて驚いた。「隣の家が火事!」だというのだ。 While I was at work, a LINE message popped up from my wife. I opened it casually, only to be shocked: “The house next door is on fire!”
動画も貼られていた。我が家の窓から見た隣家だが、煙でほとんど何も見えない。 (こちらのブログは動画を貼れないので、静止画を切り出した。) She had even attached a video. It showed the house next door as seen from our window, but the smoke was so thick that almost nothing was visible. (Since I can’t post videos here on the blog, I’ve captured a still image instead.)
Before long, the fire trucks arrived—apparently as many as six of them crowded into our narrow 4-meter street. The flames seemed to have already been put out, but the smoke was still overwhelming.
The street was flooded with water, and before I knew it the local volunteer fire brigade and even the gas company staff had shown up. Quite a commotion, it seems.
Incidentally, there was news yesterday about a fire breaking out at a Chinese restaurant in Sangenjaya, but that was a different case. As for this one, I couldn’t find any particular mention of it on social media.
Still, I can’t help but wonder—was this some kind of premonition? Just last night, as I was lying in bed lost in thought, I found myself worrying about those recent guerrilla downpours. Our house faces the Karasuyama River greenway, so it isn’t exactly safe. And then I thought—wait, our next-door neighbor is a restaurant, so if a fire were to break out there, it could easily spread to us. Strange, how those thoughts crossed my mind.
In the end, it turned out to be just a small fire, with no particular damage to our house, which was a relief. Still, it’s a stark reminder that such risks are always close at hand.