Life in Washington Gets Even Stranger

In the wee hours of Saturday morning, Ionarts Central was awakened by a loud sound. I thought at first that it was someone trying to break down the back door of the house or that a piece of an airplane or something had crashed into the roof, but a second blast of noise seemed to be coming from outdoors. We looked outside and saw lots of the neighbors outside on the street. We quickly learned through the neighborhood grapevine that a car had exploded down the street. Police and emergency officials spent the rest of the night and most of the day at the site, the carcass of an SUV that had mysteriously blown up and burned to a crisp. Well, the news comes today from the Post (Officer Injured in Blast Near D.C. Jail, December 18) that the explosion was apparently an act of sabotage. When a city corrections officer opened the door of her car, some sort of device or substance exploded, but it's not yet clear how or why. The officer is in the hospital, and the neighborhood, as you can imagine, is a little shaken.