So if you're wondering what's going on in Dallas today, a gas station downtown exploded into flame about 9:45 a.m.

I heard a large bang then subsequent smaller bangs, but didn't think much of it until someone looked out the window.

"Oh....my word!"  She said.  We slowly trickled over to the window to see what she was talking about.

About a mile away, fireballs from a gas station over by the Trinity Mills Floodplain (the one with the Longhorns; my favorite gas station!) were shooting halfway up Reunion Tower.  (For those of you who don't know how high that is, it's several hundred feet.)

Every time a fireball shot into the air we heard a loud bang!; the building shook and our windows rattled in a rather alarming way.

We stood, transfixed, as we watched the fire erupt into the sky and inky black smoke form a tall column.  There was no wind, which was good, because I'm sure the explosions would have been much more dangerous if the flames had been blown around.

"I hope no one was hurt," I said.

There hasn't been a casualty report yet that I've seen, but I did see a number of burned out cars in the live video that was up on dallasmorningnews.com.  And I'm sure some of the Longhorns next to it were hurt, poor things.  That fire had to be extremely hot.

Somebody said something about acetylene gas, but I don't know what that is.

We just got a report that they're evacuating buildings within a half mile of the blast, but my building is about a mile away.  So for right now, at least, I'm staying put.  Traffic would be a disaster anyway, two of the major freeways are closed because of the heat, smoke and debris.

Certainly an interesting thing to see, but really a sad one when you think about the people who probably died in the explosion.