THE first explosion woke me up. It sounded very loud and seemed to come from a long way off. For what seemed a long time I lay there in a lethargic trance, looking into the darkness and wondering if I might be dreaming. The bedside clock read 3 15am. The silence was so complete I was already sure Iid imagined the sound.

A sudden second explosion quickly disabused me of that notion.

Closer this time and a lot louder too. I sat bolt upright. My mind was racing.

I reminded myself to stay calm. But my head was spinning. I tried to make sense out of what was happening. Two explosions in the dead of night.

For a while the sound of heavy rainfall beating down on the tarmacked carpark didn't register.

Then I remembered the window I'd left open in the other bedroom and thought, perhaps incongruously, that I'd better close it.

In there, it seemed unusually bright. I walked to the window and looked out. The scene outside was like something from a movie. A Volkswagen car parked 50 yards away was a burning inferno. Long tongues of yellow "ame licked the bodywork . . . making the sound I'd taken for rain . . . and leaped up into the dark night. Tiny shards of glass from the shattered windows glinted on the ground. The melting tyres were pools of liquid "re. I could see paint peeling off the passenger door of a red Ford Focus parked in the next bay. A huge plume of dense black smoke funnelled up into the night sky.

The con"agration cast an eerie orange glow that lit up one entire wall of the "ve-storey block. I could see anxious faces, some of them young and ghostly pale, staring wide-eyed from behind closed windows. Had anyone dialled the emergency services? Just as I reached for my mobile phone a "ashing blue light announced the arrival of the "re brigade.

For half an hour of"cers hosed down the burning wreckage. Later on that morning, uniformed gardai inspected the incinerated shell of the 02 reg Bora. The owner, a woman in her 20s who bought the car just two weeks previously, looked on in apparent disbelief. The second damaged car also looked a write-off.

It was impossible to ascertain whether or not the "re had been started maliciously, the gardai announced, and nothing on the CCTV cameras' footage indicated evidence of intruders in the complex.

"Unfortunately, it's not unusual for vandals to set cars alight, " a spokeswoman for Dublin Fire Brigade said. 'Sometimes too they'll actually ring the "re station and hang around until the engine arrives at the scene. It seems to give them an extra kick."

I had been wondering about the underground car park in our complex and how "re of"cers might cope with a blaze down there given the twometre height restriction at the entrance. A standard pump appliance "re engine requires a clearance height of 3.7 metres and a bigger machine "tted with a turntable ladder needs four metres.

"Access for the appliance isn't necessarily important. Once "re"ghters themselves have access they can lengthen the hose to stretch to 60 metres. Your development will have been inspected by a "re safety of"cer and will be in compliance with what's known as Technical Guidance Document B, which covers "re safety standards in relation to building regulations, " the spokeswoman said.

"Standards are strict for residential developments- stricter than say for an of"ce block, because we do take into account the fact that people actually sleep in apartments.

"And it's worth bearing in mind that "re won't usually spread rapidly in an underground car park, given that what's down there is mostly concrete."