The existance of these photos was a complete accident; I've been cooped up at home for over a week due to car problems, and I finally made it out to run some errands.  I decided to have a leisurely lunch/dinner at a nearby park, and as I was leaving the house, I decided on a whim to grab my camera.  As luck would have it, one of the largest fires the area has seen for a long time started two blocks away as I was finishing my meal.  So, I was able to capture the heroic work of the Harrisonburg Fire Department as the event unfolded.

Upon leaving the park, I started this pursuit by chasing the ominous cloud of smoke to the south.  I'd never seen a smoke column like that in person before, it was very eerie.

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After I narrowed down the location of the blaze, I parked my car and climbed up the nearest hill to figure out exactly what was going on.  When I reached the top of the hill, I received my answer; Dave's Recycling had caught on fire.

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From this vantage point, I was able to capture my favourite image out of the whole set; two firefighters working together atop Tower 1, the HFD's most well-known apparatus.

From the same spot, I also witnessed Tower 2, the newest HFD tower-truck, preparing to fight the blaze from the other side of the building.  I'd never seen one of these vehicles setting up before, I've only seen them fully-ready or in transit, so this was rather interesting as well.  Unfortunately, the winds changed after T2 began extending its ladder, and the smoke smelled a bit chemical-laden for my tastes, so I vacated my perch and headed for the Food Lion parking lot down the hill, where everyone else in town gathered.

After pushing through crowds of people to get some worthwhile photos of the event, I saw just how large the burning property was.  It spanned most of the width of the parking lot, and one part of it was still prominently burning!  I assume it was something worthless and/or very difficult to extinguish, but still a bit unnerving to see.  I accidently got a bit too close in the process, or at least it felt like it; I was right under the constantly-burning pile at one point, and it felt like a sauna!  There were no barriers or anything, and other photographers were freely wandering much closer to the firetrucks than me (with much greater zoom capability, go figure), so I guess it wasn't a big deal.  Just toasty

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For some reason, the firefighters atop the tower trucks were particularly interesting, and inspiring, so they were the focus of most of good shots.  The fact that I couldn't see the back of the blaze, where the rest of the firefighters were, undoubtedly contributed to this perspective.

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And lastly, the final image I took of this event.  At this point, something particularly nasty must've started burning in the aforementioned flaming pile, because it began putting off pure black smoke, and lots of it.  I thought about sticking around longer, but I had other things to do, and I was running out of photo ideas.