the ash-sucker

It was so strange that I’m only barely sure that it wasn’t a dream. But at around 2 AM today, a very large truck pulled up directly in front of the apartment that burned the other day. For the next hour, it made what seemed to be a very loud sucking sound.

From the balcony, with bleary eyes, I couldn’t actually see a hose of any sort leading from the truck up to the 4th floor apartment. But surely it must have been some sort of attempt to suck the ash and cinders out of that apartment. I can’t think of any other reason for a big truck to be making that sort of sound directly in front of that particular building just two days after that fire.

But I’ve never heard of such a process, and am also not sure why it had to be done at 2:00 in the morning. It effectively ruined one’s sleep for the night. There was no way you could have slept through that.