And the Destruction Continues!

Whoever says the morning shift is boring and nothing ever happens hasn't had a morning like mine. I got up at 3:33 *shudder* and got ready for work, actually leaving a few minutes early for a change. It was still dark when I was driving down 1st Avenue NorthWest on my way to work at 4:30. At the end of the street (which is on a hill, so at the bottom of the hill) there was a really strange cloud. I thought it was terribly foggy this morning, until I got closer and saw the fog was moving very quickly. Then I wondered if it was a really big dust devil that had stirred up tons of gravel and dirt, but as I got closer, the cloud kept moving but didn't seem to end and I realized it was smoke pouring out of a building. Through the smoke I saw the flashing lights of the fire department's brand new Ladder 2 (the truck with the bucket on the end that I got to ride in). The street was closed directly infront of me (and in front of our parking lot), so I detoured around the block and tried to get a better view of which building was on fire.
Once I got to the station, from the back door I had a perfect view of the fire. The building was right across the back alley behind the station and across our parking lot. Almost totally unobstructed.
There were a few people gathered in the parking lot watching the fire, and since it was little early in the morning for spectators to be out, I assumed they either owned the building or something around it.
Being the true blue newsie that I am, I grabbed a minidisc player and went out with a pad and paper to get some info (slightly excited, and a little happy at the prospect of having some breaking news for the morning run). The people gathered turned out to be the owners of the neighbouring business. The one on fire was the warehouse for a furniture store which had just got a new shipment in and was packed to the brim aparently...excellent fuel for a fire. I also learned it had been burning since 11:25 that night! From the size of the flames, I had thought it was very new, not over 5 hours old!
Anyway, it raged on while the firefighters did their best to contain it, which they seem to have been successful. I don't think there was anything more than smoke damage to the neighbouring business (though that's bad enough).
One other bit of interesting information is that the empty lot next to the building once housed an abandoned apartment complex which ALSO burned down three years ago. Interesting. Maybe they need to re-evaluate these structures?
Anyway, at around 6 I went out and took a bunch of pictures:

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This was around 7 when the roof collapsed and the fire flared up again inside
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Things were starting to settle down a little by this time, and the truck switched position.
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I took this one just before leaving work at noon today. The firefighters were still dumping tons of water on the skelaton of a building, and it was still smoking a little, but not a whole lot.