Sunday morning in Granada Nov 20, 2011 - San Matias Church Fire

Woke up at 4am- couldn't sleep. About 5am I heard a crackling sound outside. We are on the 4th floor of an apartment building. I opened the window and saw a fire below through the trees. I thought a homeless person had built a fire to keep warm but the smoke was too heavy. I went into the hall and went down 1/2 floor to look out another window that was not blocked by the tree. I could see the Church door was fully engulfed in flames. There is one door to our apartment building and it directly faces the door that was on fire. The courtyard had flames too (later found out there was some type of flammable liquid so the fire was within about 10 feet of our only exit door for the 10 apartments. I ran back in apartment, woke Clemente & told him to grab what he could. I went back into the hall and broke the fire alarm button and the alarm sounded. It was not loud enough to wake people so I ran to every door in the building over 3 floors and banged on doors yelling "fuego- fire". I was so worried that I was saying fuego wrong as I don't speak Spanish but I thought I knew that word. The oddest thing was all I could think of was that I was saying the wrong word. I thought I might be yelling Cheese! (Queso). We grabbed our computers, wallets, passports, daybags, and ran down the stairs. I remember my fire training and felt the door before opening it as the flames were right outside. I had Clemente & others in the stairs stand back while I opened it and it was safe. These pictures show some of the fire before we were told to leave the courtyard.



Some police/fire people showed up before the trucks did but they couldn't do anything


All the people from our apartment building out front in the street during the fire


The stonework above the doorway charred from the fire. It lasted 400+ years.....until today. Amazing.



Later in the morning- Standing in front of the destruction. On the left you see the lower 1/2 of the door still intact but all the wood at the top of both doors is gone. About 1 foot beyond the door is a brick wall. This door was no longer in use. If they had not built that brick wall, the Church would be gone!. The flames did get inside the gap as we saw embers & flames up higher in a window but the fire department must have gotten that out quick enough.


Such a shame that this was destroyed so quickly


Our apartment is the top floor- you see the balcony which looks down onto the street and the Church courtyard.

The Water Bearer statue (at the restaurant of the same name)

Statue in center of town at the Gran Via


Quiet Sunday morning around town

Looking up at the Alhambra which we'll be going to tomorrow

Inside St Peter & Paul Church. I'm not sure significance of the 3 baby angel heads but I saw them several times today

Walking around Plaza Neuva area with winding streets, brooks, stone bridges, etc

The streets around town have amazing stonework

We followed a group of kids in a tour into this courtyard- not sure what it was, but since it was Sunday and 95% of the town was closed, we did what we could :)

Very "happy" bullfighter

Below is a short video standing out front. The Church bells rang incessantly- we assume to let people know there was a fire or maybe the fire triggered some malfunction. It was NOISY for a long time (You have to click on the triangle to play the video. You can click on the box with 4 arrows to increase the size)

Video of fire before fire trucks arrived