Kevin Drum, Cub Photographer

I was driving around on Friday afternoon with my camera when I got distracted by a plume of smoke nearby. Tonight is dex night and I’m already bored, so you get to hear all about it. Here’s the plume:

Let’s go see what it is! Great gouts of smoke were coming from a building behind the Coca-Cola bottling plant on Grove St. in Orange:

Lots of other people were there taking pictures too:

I drove out to Batavia St. to get a better look at the firefighting. This had been going on for over an hour by the time I got there:

Here’s a closeup of the firefighter at the top of one of the ladders. Not bad for my little camera:

And here’s the artsy shot, because why not?

December 27, 2019 — Orange, California

According to the Orange Fire Department, the fire was at Lake Management Inc., which, ironically, is exactly what it sounds like: LMI is a company that manages lakes, ponds, water features, retention basins, and so forth. No word yet on how the fire started.

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GREAT JOURNALISM, SLOW FUNDRAISING

Our team has been on fire lately—publishing sweeping, one-of-a-kind investigations, ambitious, groundbreaking projects, and even releasing “the holy shit documentary of the year.” And that’s on top of protecting free and fair elections and standing up to bullies and BS when others in the media don’t.

Yet, we just came up pretty short on our first big fundraising campaign since Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting joined forces.

So, two things:

1) If you value the journalism we do but haven’t pitched in over the last few months, please consider doing so now—we urgently need a lot of help to make up for lost ground.

2) If you’re not ready to donate but you’re interested enough in our work to be reading this, please consider signing up for our free Mother Jones Daily newsletter to get to know us and our reporting better. Maybe once you do, you’ll see it’s something worth supporting.

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