Old News: The fire-breathing rags of Station No. 2

💭 My thought bubble: Nearly every fire safety talk, poster and video during my youth warned that piles of greasy rags were a major peril, and I always had the same thought:

• Under what circumstance do people imagine I might be in possession of enough greasy rags to make a pile of them?

Call it the mark of a sheltered life, but, I had — and still have — never seen a pile of greasy rags in the wild.

• And yet, here it was: that obscure chimera of childhood myth, made manifest. At the fire department.

Meanwhile, the firefighters at Station No. 2 when the fire began said the smoke alarms didn't reach the floor where they were sleeping.

The latest: The 2015 fire is tied to an ongoing discrimination and retaliation lawsuit filed by a former battalion chief.

• She accuses the department of blaming her for alleged fire code violations at the station, which she said leadership tried to cover up.

Previously in Old News

• The Challenger's Utah cautionary tale
• Ballot measures that tipped the scales
• Mr. Robinson's opus
• The scourge of turkey gambling
• Mountain Meadows Massacre, retold