The Paradise Gardens is neither

The north complex of the Paradise Gardens apartments were engulfed in smoke and flames Friday evening. I was sitting in our new lofty perch (the newsroom) when I got a call about the fire. After battling traffic to get to the scene the Long Beach Police were uncharacteristically nice as they moved the barricade and let me park inside the police line. First thing I saw was residents being treated by firefighters - but when I lifted my camera to my eye and pushed the shutter button I heard an unfamiliar THUMP - it was the mirror inside the camera body breaking. So now my job just became twice as hard - not only did I need to cover this major story in our city, but I had to do it with one camera. One camera might sound like enough, but when your used to having different camera with different lens just an arms reach away the change can really slow you down. I watched as the firefighters fought the blaze and the Red Cross set up a shelter in the high school across the street. - Then the politicians started showing up; First it was Counclilman Val Lerch, that makes sense, the fire was in his district. Then Mayor Bob Foster, ok, he is the mayor of the city. Then Coucilmember Bonnie Lothenthal shows up, not sure why, she's in charge of the first district, but she looked like she was enjoying reading to children in the shelter. And for some reason I can't figure out there were a number of Realtors wearing name tags with their agency name on it trying to help. All in all it was a pretty long night.
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