Things that go KABOOM in the night.
Last night around 3am I was up getting a glass of water when there were a series of really loud bangs and flashes of light. I know lightening and this was no lightening. It was very directional and seemed to come from the east since it lit up the houses across from me clear as day and I have west facing windows. The light and the sound were almost simultaneous so it had to be pretty close. I’m at 10th Ave and Judah to give you a base reference. Basically it scared the crap out of me and my girlfriend but there were no more after the first set and no emergency vehicle sirens. It was extraordinarily strange. Anyone else see/hear anything last night around that time?
UPDATE: Just some idiots with bottle rockets it would seem. (Thanks cobrien) But I agree with Morey. Those sounded like freakin’ mortars. They vibrated my windows 2 and a half blocks away. Maybe they were clustering them but it was BIG, BRIGHT and LOUD as hell.
UPDATE TWO: More information coming to light in the comments.
You know, I think I heard this! Yeah, so WTF?
I heard it too, over here at 6th and Hugo. There were about twenty loud ‘bangs’. I’m not familiar with firearms. Could it have been a shotgun? Whatever was making the sound was scary enough that I wasn’t going to go outside and investigate.
Heard a report on this on KQED on the way to work this morning. Someone fired off a bunch of fireworks at 8th and Irving around 3 am. Link to Mercury News story (warning: popups).
If they were bottle rockets, they were much higher powered than the ones I had as a youth. It sounded like dynamite.
is THAT what that was. i live up by fulton/masonic and i heard them going off. i thought it was a clunky motorcycle engine a few blocks away; i’m impressed that it was actually several neighborhoods over. i’m all for big bright loud explosions, but maybe next time let’s do them someplace safer, and not so middle-of-the-nightey.
I live at 5th and Kirkham and let me tell you this was no box of roadside fireworks. These were the real deal, launched from a mortar on the fourth of july versions. My wife and I jumped out of bed (praying that our sick daughter wasn’t awoken), looking out the window, we saw what looked to be a serious, in rapid succession, fireworks show taking place.
Didn’t last that long, but we called the police regardless. Especially since we didn’t hear any indication that they were responding, e.g. no sirens, etc. No reporting in the chronicle today either. And imho this is something that could’ve turned bad quickly. The quality of firework, I’ll say again, was not your roadside variety, meaning they could have certainly done significant damage to property if not harm to some person. Has anyone heard anymore details?
Fireworks? I find that a little hard to believe. I live on top of the hill overlooking the park (12th and Pacheco). I jumped out of bed and saw large explosions going off around Lincoln and 10th. There were at lest 10 rapid sequential explosions and the explosion clouds looked rather large….and there certainly werent any pretty colours. Oh well, at least no one was hurt
Ok, so I dug a little deeper on this one, mostly out of concern that the SFPD was going to treat this as a non-event. So I called the Park Station of the Golden Gate division, which is literally about 6 blocks away from where the explosions occurred. And guess what, it was a non-event in their humble opinions.
The person I spoke with told me that I was the fourth person who has called in the past 2 hours, which suprises me. He told me first there is/was no investigation. Then he said officers responded, and found nothing. There was no property damage and no one reported injured, so there will be no further investigation. I find this disconcerting as this was no run of the mill fireworks launch. This was some industrial grade explosives going off. Since when does that go without “investigation”? If you want to call to let yourself be heard, express concern or not, feel free to call the station at this number:
SFPD - Park Station
1899 Waller Street
San Francisco, CA 94117
(415) 242-3000
P.S. in what is starting to become my standard SFPD interaction, the more questions I asked, the more hostile they became.
This scared the hell out of me. I live at 10th and Kirkham and literally thought it was going off in my backyard. Unless maybe NASA is making new and improved bottle rockets I’d definitley say they were major explosives. The only similiar sound I’ve ever heard was when I lived in Seattle and they imploded the King Dome. I’d also like to know who was running across my roof after the blasts.
What disturbs the hell out of me about what you’re uncovering Richard is that those of us who saw or heard it know it wasn’t a small thing that happened. At all. And the fact that it’s being treated as a non-incident is even worse. First thing that jumps to my mind in my own little wartime paranoia is that it could have been a test by people planning an attack in the city of the emergency response system to see how fast they would react to an event like this. You take that information and use it in a larger plan to mask your real attacks. What may have thrown them off a bit is that no one actually gave a shit. And wouldn’t that be a wonderful way to spread a bio attack over a heavily populated area in short order? Do it while everyone is sleeping so it gets maximum coverage. Just how I think some days :-)
I was just getting ready to crash out (12th/Irv area) and heard the bangs. First thought was we were at war, then I saw the mini grand finale - which kinda rocked..
Kevin
i thought it was some series gunfire. i live at divis and hayes and didn’t see anything but heard 13 loud bangs in succession. it clearly wasn’t backfire or anything, so i figured someone just got shot the hell up. when i went out this morning there was no sign of anything. good to know nothing bad happened. but it *was weird* and loud.
Happens often at my place (NB near Columbus and Broadway)… Some kids with hardcore crackers. Much better than the M-80’s I lit as teenager. The light flash is pretty amazing as well. During the Chinese New Year they will set them off throughout the night. Pretty F-ing annoying!