Nobody Likes To See This On A Thursday Morning

First off let me tell you all that EVERYBODY'S FINE!

(When my kids were small and they would call me from school in seemingly urgent tones about such cataclysmal disasters as a forgotten lunchbox or a misplaced homework, they were well trained to begin the phone call with "everybody's fine", so I didn't have to spend even 30 heart-stopping seconds wondering which limb was fractured...)

But before I was even fortified with my morning coffee, I encountered this scene outside shul on my way to work today:

No less than five firetrucks with lights and sirens were pulling up outside our Beis Haknesses as the elementary school boys were being evacuated (to my place of business, I might add... and in a VERY ORDERLY FASHION).

Further disconcerting was this sight INSIDE the shul, accompanied by a very acrid smell of smoke.





It is a very unsettling and upsetting feeling to stand inside a shul and smell burning, I will tell you that!

There was much walking around with fancy thermal camera detectors, but time passed and though the smell was still as strong as ever, no heat sources were being picked up. In the end, the most low-tech device won out. "The nose knows", as they say, and one fireman just "followed his nose" until he isolated the strongest odor coming from a bookcase in the back of shul.

Some unloading, unscrewing and prying the bookshelf, followed the ultimate "sniff test", confirming that the smell was coming from a transformer in the floor under the bookcase. It could have been much worse and boruch Hashem everyone is fine.

We now return you your regular programming.

This has been G6 reporting.....