Grand pier on fire

Our 23 month son had a rough night and woke us up several times and after getting up at 3.45am to settle him I was looking forward to having a lie in... At around 7am I became aware of a weird crackling noise & sirens coming from outside. For a while the noise sort of combined with my dreams... but as soon as our power went off in our building and the baby monitor started beeping I was leaping out of bed to see what on earth was going on.

As I headed across to the bedroom window I was thinking how strange a time it was for someone to let off so many fireworks... What I saw on opening the shutters had me transfixed in horror...

Our Grand Pier was engulfed in flames and smoke. I loved looking at it every day... all the windows in our apartment have views of the pier & it also looked very pretty at night when lit up with it's myriad of green lights that reflected beautifully on the water... that is when the tide was in.

It was well after 9am when the flames died down a bit... and then my son woke up pretty much missing it all!

Our walks on the beach won't be the same... so many happy memories... such a great shame.

All that's left is a hollow burnt out shell... thank goodness there was no one hurt and the wind blew the smoke away from the shore... or we would have been engulfed in smoke for hours.