JORALEMON STREET — Just before midnight on Tuesday night, a fire engine tore out of its station on Hicks Street and, with sirens blaring, ripped a right turn and headed the wrong way down Joralemon Street. Just as flames erupted on the sidewalk, the engine blasted its horns and sirens at an SUV that was seemingly double-parked and refusing to move.

A panicked woman was screaming. The flames grew higher. Someone jumped into the SUV, and the vehicle took off fast down the street with what appeared to be three or four young men and women inside.

The orange flames grew high quickly, and the firefighters jumped out of the engine, organized their hoses and shouted instructions to one another. It appeared as though a veteran firefighter was teaching a rookie how to calmly and methodically extinguish the blaze. After all, it was just a bunch of discarded carpets that had been set afire at the curb.

The flames were quickly eradicated.

Though it appeared as though the rubbish fire in front of 107 Joralemon St. was quite possibly lit by the people who seemingly fled in the SUV, that fact has not been confirmed. Neither the police nor fire department could confirm that the fire was an act of arson, either. But at midnight, it seems unlikely that the flames spontaneously combusted within the garbage.

One fact that was for certain was that the sanitation workers were visibly annoyed yesterday morning when they pulled up to the charred mess on the sidewalk.

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