Quiet Sunday afternoon in Plainpalais?...

We were sitting at home on Sunday afternoon since I've been sick this past week and had to take it slow to recover.
This was the view from our apartment...

When all of a sudden we heard multiple firetruck sirens really close. All of them seemed to be coming towards our apartment building.
We raced to the window and realized that there was a raging fire going on at an apartment across the street from us!!
So we ran to the balcony and started documenting.
Eventually we counted 7 fire trucks, 1 ambulance, and at least 5 police cars.
By the time everyone showed up black smoke was billowing out of the window (glas burst and then the firefighters broke whatever was left) and we could see huge flames coming out. Insane! I've never seen a house/apartment fire so close. You can see the fire in the picture below...

First the yellow suit guys went to work. One guy got on the extension lift and a few more went inside.

The guy on the lift was working from the outside, breaking the glass, pulling shutters off both in the burning apartment as well as the apartment right above it. The other guys hooked up their hoses to the truck and to a street hydrant and ran upstairs to spray water.
The lift guy was pretty amazing. At one point he even hopped out of the cage and went inside to help. Mind you this apartment is ON THE 7TH FLOOR!!!
Here are some action shots

By the way, we were not the only nosy ones. Eeeeeeeeveryone was looking out their windows checking out what was going on. It was pretty serious looking.

 This one guy was hilarious... hanging pretty much 5 feet from the lift guy and the fire.

For the first few minutes the trams were still running on the tram side of the street but quickly the lane got blocked off and the trams were re-routed to go another way.
Crowds of people kept gathering on the streets. We saw two guys with professional looking photo lenses, probably from a newspaper. Even a news camera guy showed up. We don't get local tv so I'm not sure how or if they covered it.

After a while the flames and smoke stopped and the guys inside got rid of the last bits of glass and shutters. The place looked completely black and destroyed inside. Then a second crew of fire fighter guys went in (blue suits). Not sure what they do, probably finish work or assessment. We saw them still at work after everyone else was gone.

We stood there for a while watching. Here is CJ posing.

 But then the tram tracks got opened again so we decided the show was over. After that we just kept checking every now and then to see if anything was happening.

How is that for a quiet Sunday afternoon!
Good thing nobody was hurt in the fire. The ambulance left fairly soon. Looked like for the burning apartment and the one right above it were empty at the time so it was good.
Pretty awful to think that when the renters come back tonight they will find so much destruction and damage.
It is scary to think how dangerous a fire situation could get in a huge apartment building like this one or any other one in a really tight city like Geneva. The streets here are tiny, half of them are covered in parked cars or, like in Old Town, so steep and narrow that you can only dream of getting a fire truck in there...