APEX, N.C. -- Authorities asked as many as 17,000 residents to evacuate early Friday as firefighters waited for word from a hazardous materials crew before approaching a fire that at one point shot flames some 150 feet into the sky.

Chemical fires are no fun.  Good thing I live far enough west of it.

Darn, battery in my work laptop is listed.

... photos!  Here, here, and here.

It was really crowded.

Lots of…

Water:

Concrete:

and Power:

No details, but NSTX does work.. barely:

64 bytes from 69.9.189.182: icmp_seq=5 ttl=46 time=146 ms
64 bytes from 69.9.189.182: icmp_seq=3 ttl=46 time=2166 ms (DUP!)
64 bytes from 69.9.189.182: icmp_seq=1 ttl=46 time=4167 ms (DUP!)

I wonder how IDS'es would flag tons of TXT record traffic, hmm.

Fun!

Ok, I'll admit that I applied the "auto white balance" filter on both, then resized to 1152x864.

Pictures really can't do it justice, but here's one:

Also, there was some unmarked elk crossing:

Photo gallery … later.