Family news: no more palenke

The dogs woke me at 2:30 am, but I just thought they heard revelers returning home.
About 3, I heard some sirens and then the electricity went off, so I placed candles in the bathroom and in the kitchen and checked the door was shut. Nothing there but a tricycle driver sleeping across the street. But the sirens continued, and we heard noise outside, so at 3:45 I went outside with a candle and saw Joy investigating the shouting.

She lives on the second floor, and when she was on the staircase noticed a glow in the east. Soon everyone was up investigating, and we could see a huge glow and smoke coming from the Palenke. At 4, Dita arrived with the news. There was an "electrical" fire that started about 2am, and the sirens were all the various fire fighting equipment coming to help quell the blaze.

We got things ready in case the fire spread, but luckily only concrete buildings are between us and the palenke, and the wind was light and to the south...which meant all the street vendors on the main street got burnt out too. (The Tsinalis/sandal festival is coming, so a lot of temporary booths were along the street, separated only by a ten foot parking lot).

In the US, usually fires at 2 am are arson, planned so not to kill anyone. Was this arson? I don't know...but there had been talk to move the palenke out near Waltermart and the newer part of town. Now this will probably be done.
The bad news is that a lot of our neighbors ran small shops in the palenke (what woke me was them racing to try to save their stock...but it was too late).
Since ordinarly shop keepers don't usually have insurance, there will be a lot of families losing their livelihood, and the ones to benefit will be the outsiders who have capital to place shops in the new palenke.

Sigh.