| What are we doing?
November 8th, 2001 Looking out the window at first light - at the smoking ruins. Had a weird night here. The neighbourhood behind me (the Thorbecke-quarter, popularly called 'Harmenjansquarter' after the Harmenjansroad that's part of it) is getting emptier by the day, preceding its deconstruction. Now the remaining inhabitants have started setting fire to the empty lots - four in a row yesterday, and one more this past night, which is still smouldering now, a fireman-on-a-ladder above it, some 100 metres from my window. Those punters out back here may be having good fun, but fail to realize that all this eats up enough capacity to make it impossible to help should a more serious fire erupt somewhere else. By itself, what they're doing right now isn't all that dangerous, because, as they still live around it, they carefully pick the house to burn down. But I've been up all night, not so much because of the sirens as because of the sound of the generators for the firehoses. It's like a war here. When I look out the window I see four burnt out roofs and two fire ladders telescoping in and out - the chocolate factory right next to it, meanwhile, continues producing 24 hours a day. It's a bizarre world. This ends this happy newsreport from Haarlem (no, unfortunately I do not own a digital camera - but I do have some earlier photography of the surroundings here). |
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