Finding Beauty in a Tragedy

[This post was originally posted on  Andrew Seaman Photography.]


On Saturday January 9th, 2016 a fire broke out after a small explosion in M’s Pub located in Omaha’s historic and iconic Old Market neighborhood. The fire ravaged the building and broke the hearts of all those who had ever stepped foot in the Old Market, especially M’s Pub. The fire would rage on for around 12 hours before it was considered under control. The Omaha Fire Department not only had to battle the three alarm fire in front of them, but also the frigid below freezing temperatures with wind chills hovering around -15 degrees.

Because of a major warehouse fire in Chicago a couple of years ago in similar conditions, I knew that whatever was left of M’s Pub and the apartments above it would look oddly beautiful once the fire was out. Subzero temperatures and thousands of gallons of water makes for an impressive sight. Here are a few of the pictures I took this morning.

Old Market Fire

Old Market Fire

Old Market Fire

Old Market Fire

Old Market Fire

Old Market Fire

Old Market Fire

Old Market Fire

Old Market Fire

Old Market Fire

Old Market Fire

Old Market Fire

Old Market Fire

Old Market Fire

Old Market Fire

Old Market Fire

Old Market Fire

Old Market Fire

Old Market Fire

Old Market Fire

Old Market Fire

Old Market Fire

Old Market Fire

Old Market Fire

Old Market Fire

Old Market Fire

Old Market Fire

Published by Andrew

a ragamuffin dad planting some sequoias

2 thoughts on “Finding Beauty in a Tragedy

  1. Oh man! I was just there visiting for the first time during Thanksgiving. I hope for their speedy recovery. I hope no one was injured?

    1. One person was taken to the hospital, but I never heard a follow up. Assuming they are recovering ok.

      It doesn’t seem that it will be a speedy recovery. They might have to knock it all down and build again.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: