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MEXICO — We had a major wildfire in the hills above my neighborhood a few years back. After smelling smoke and searching the house for the source, I looked out the window and saw the terrifying glow of the fire creeping toward the homes just above mine.
All families were ordered to evacuate, so we gathered the kids into the van and prepared to leave. By this time, the fire had grown even larger and the night sky was an eerie shade of orange.
Before pulling out of the driveway, I ran to my next-door neighbor's house to make sure he wasn't sleeping through the chaos. I pounded on his door a few times, then decided he must be out of town (the dude seems to travel to amazing destinations on a regular basis).
As I suspected, my neighbor was out of town. But his phone received a notification that someone had been on his doorstep. And when he viewed the footage from his doorbell camera, it was absolutely bizarre. There I was in my pajamas, banging on his door and peering around with crazy eyes while flames lept behind me. This unsettling little video came to him in the middle of the night and he later told me that he initially thought he was having a nightmare.
I recalled that video when I stumbled upon this security camera footage from Mexico.
Wildfires are definitely scary, but there's something truly wild about seeing lava launching into the night sky. The footage comes from Atlixco, Mexico, where the Popocatepetl volcano erupted May 14, at 3 a.m.
And, how about that boom? You can see the eruption for what seems like forever before the thunderous sound reached the camera's location.
