It looked as if every city block had a fire. That was probably an exaggeration, but there were certainly hundreds of them, perhaps thousands. And the smoke was all black. He knew that when firefighters poured water on a blaze the smoke usually turned white. There was not a single plume of white to be seen. The LAFD was out of commission, out of gas, probably out of water with broken water mains. These fires would have to burn themselves out. Which could take a long time if they spread to neighboring houses, and jumped streets. Dave didn’t see any reason why they wouldn’t. The only good news was that there was no wind. By far the largest fire was in one of the triangular towers in Century City. It looked like it had started down low, on the third or fourth floor, and had by now engulfed the whole structure. Dave thought it was unlikely that anyone had been in the building, then wondered if cleaning staff had still been working. They might have made it out by the stairway on the side opposite the fire.
