till human voices wake us

Evidently, there's been an underground fire downtown - giant kerboom, black smoke pouring from blown manhole covers, power outages - and the epicenter of the mess is riiiiight in the segment of the square and surrounds I tend to frequent. One of the most affected roads is a main stem for me, travel-wise, and a coffee shop I frequent is on a corner that's now in the temporary exclusion zone. Yikes! There but for the grace of God, and my slightly early decision to make a grocery run, go I! Maybe someone benevolent was whispering in my ear yesterday?

I haven't heard of any injuries or above-ground structural damage, thankfully, but there've been road closures and detours all over that area. I suspect at least some of the outages were deliberate power cuts while workers put the fire out. We lost Internet service over here on the near west side, because our service provider is smack in the middle of the mess, but it's now up and rolling again, which is a good sign for folks downtown. Still, though. I could easily have been in the thick of some serious chaos had I gone that direction today, as I often do on the weekends. I actually considered it, but then the Brewer game was on and engaging, and I said... nah. Someone benevolent whispering in my ear indeed.

Anyway. Safe, well, and grateful. If any other Madison folks are reading this, check in, please?