New J6 Fences Up At The Capitol Building

PenguinSix:

Hey guys, good morning! We are back in Washington, DC. We’re on Capitol Hill right now because, well, there’s a bunch of fencing that has gone up in anticipation of the inauguration.

I think, though, some might say it’s in anticipation of the vote count on January 6th, which is, what, a week away? Yeah. We’ve got about one more week until the election is certified.

Fences have gone up around, well, this is the Library of Congress on my left and the Supreme Court on my right, but they’re all part, basically, of the Capitol Hill Campus complex. The fences have set up a rather large perimeter around the entire building.

So we have an assignment: take pictures of the preparation, fences, and whatnot. And that’s what we’re going to do—take some pictures.

You can see, guys, fencing has gone up outside this Capitol building. It surrounds the entire building. We’re here at the Supreme Court; you can see the flags are down at half-staff.

This will be taking place all over the city. I could probably take some photos of half-staff flags because there’s not much else to report today. And we’ll take a few.

Okay guys, so we are up at the U.S. Capitol now, walking past a rather large amount of tourists, to be honest. I guess it’s the Christmas holiday still going on. Everybody’s just taking a holiday to see the big city.

The flag is at half-staff here. We’re going to take a picture of that, submit it, and we’re going to go downtown to see what we can do over there.

Not a lot going on on Capitol Hill today—they’re not in session. But in a week, it’ll be back in action. We’re out on this side of the U.S. Capitol now, and now the wind kicks up as soon as I hit video.

So we’ve got to flip back to stills. As soon as I flip the camera to stills, the wind goes down, then goes up. Alright, let’s finish this, get this photo.

Okay, I think we got our photo—only took about 20 minutes to wait for the wind to blow. Alright, let’s head out East Capitol Street, and we’re going to walk back onto Capitol Hill. Then we’re going to go down to the monuments.

Probably the Washington Monument and the White House, get pictures of the flag down there, then we’ll get something to eat.

Yeah, we do have a lot of police cars going around, so maybe we’ll turn on the police radio and see if something’s amiss.

Okay, so the sirens refer to a car fire. A car caught on fire—that’s a pretty regular occurrence. Don’t think I can get there in time to catch it. I think it’s already out. C’est la vie.

But we’re going to walk back, make our way back to the White House now. So we’re out here at Second Street, and this is the perimeter that they’ve set up.

This is the same perimeter that existed after January 6th. It’s what the Republicans called “Fort Pelosi” as the fences were up after January 6th for several months, all the way out to this point.

It drove the neighborhood community crazy because it cut off a lot of access roads to get around the Capitol, the Reflecting Pool side. And you can see the riot fence extends pretty much around the whole perimeter of the building.

This is probably a couple of miles of fencing, and I guess this will stay up through the inaugural.

Alright, and we know we’re getting ready now—they’re bringing in the porta-potties.

PenguinSix:

Okay, up there you can see one of the big cell phone towers that have popped up on the Mall. There’s, I don’t know, must be like a dozen of these things. That’s to handle the overflow crowd that’ll be here for Trump’s inauguration in a couple of weeks.

That way everybody can post their Instagram photos and everything without any fear of losing a connection.

Okay, the flags are going to have to wait—we’re en route to Georgetown University, where there’s been a propane leak in a chemistry lab. It went out as a gas leak call, which is relatively minor, but then they’ve just upgraded it to a full hazmat response, bringing in more fire trucks. So, let’s go.

Okay, we are in Georgetown finally. A lot of traffic, and there is the response blocking the road. Looks like they’ve cleared out most of the major stuff. I don’t think anything significant happened, and it looks like this one is just going to be cleared out.

Yep, they just released the attack channel—everybody’s clear. Oh well.

Okay guys, hazmat has fizzled out, but now we’ve got a fire. Smoke is showing from the top floor of a four-story apartment building just on the other side of the Anacostia River from the Capitol. Let’s get down there if we can.

Alright, we’re on scene. Behind that truck, there’s a bunch of fire trucks. Fire was knocked down, though. Looks like it was a four-story apartment building, and nothing extended.

Alright, they’re clearing up now. Alright, they’ve cleared this one. We’re going to head out.

Yeah, oh, they’ve got 11 fire trucks. They’ve got six AM units still decked out in Christmas attire. That’s the air unit they call whenever it’s a working fire like this.

This one’s been knocked down—they’re just cleaning up, putting their hoses away, and heading out. That means time for me to get lunch.

Okay, so minor living room fire quickly knocked down by the first engine, but they still wanted to make sure it didn’t spread to the entire building.

Alright, we are down in far southwest DC. I don’t know what there is to eat around here, but let’s go find something somewhere.

Yeah, so down here on the right, you see this box truck there, and he’s selling a lot of goods right there on the side of the street like toilet paper, bleach, Clorox, laundry detergent.

There’s a lot of suspicion about their sources. A lot of people think that these guys who sell on the street are basically selling shoplifted goods from CVSs and grocery stores.

I don’t know. So I’m supposed to post photos of the Capitol, the White House, and the monuments with the flags at half-staff. I got the Capitol done, but I haven’t got the other ones yet because I’ve been running around to these fires and everything.

Let’s get over to the White House, get that photo, and then maybe we’ll be able to call it a day. You know, for not a busy day, it’s just got to become busy.

I’ve got to get this photo of the White House because they want it right away, but DC police have just found a body floating in Rock Creek back up on T Street, up by past the zoo.

That’s on my way home, so we’re going to run, get this photo of the White House, and then we’re going to go back, and maybe we’ll go look at this body recovery.

PenguinSix:

Okay guys, we are down on the Ellipse—that’s the Eisenhower Building over there. Flags are at half-staff there. The wind isn’t really blowing right now at the White House, which is really annoying because I’ve got to get this photo.

I’ve got to get it now. The National Menorah is up. I think Hanukkah started, what, the 25th? Was that the first day of Hanukkah or the last? I don’t even know—I think it was the first. So that’s now over.

Here we’re going to go out somewhere on the Ellipse to get this photo because I don’t want to get the fence in the photo. I want to shoot over the fence if possible.

Oh, blast. Alright, that idea sucks. Fence is everywhere.

Okay, so the annoying fence that the Park Service has had up for a couple of years is still there. The Hanukkah fence is there, and there’s a small gap in between the two where I can go out and get my photo.

Then we’ll go look for this body or something. Okay guys, we have gotten our photo. The flags are at half-staff. There’s a clear view of the POW-MIA flag, at least when the wind was blowing.

There’s also some box trucks. You guys are asking me about box trucks. There’s a box truck there, and there’s one back there on the other side—you can’t really see it; it’s at the East Wing.

Don’t know what they’re doing in there. They’re pretty common to see box trucks—they bring stuff in and out all the time, to be honest.

They’re probably taking out the Christmas decorations. They’re probably going to have that cleared by January 1st. So, I don’t think I can see the tree—right. Oh, actually hang on, let me zoom in.

I can’t make out if the tree is still there. It kind of looks like it is, right there in the middle. That was the big circus tree, right in that window. Kind of looks like there’s a tree—maybe.

Maybe that’s just the curtains—the way the curtains are shaped looks kind of like a tree. Alright, and, well, no sign of them loading or anything like that.

Alright, let’s get back up to our next thing. By the way, the National Menorah is set up on the Ellipse every year. They have a big ceremony. In fact, the Vice President’s husband came out here to light it up a couple of times.

Alright, we’re on Rock Creek. There’s a fire truck that was probably used to fish the body out of the river creek.

Not sure if they’re still on the scene, but we’ll make our way up through the zoo tunnel and up to T Street, which is actually near a lot of embassies. But, well, let’s just see what we can see.

Okay, we’re a bit deeper into Rock Creek now—less cars, more rocks—and we’re making our way to T Street, where the police are still on the scene.

Looks like we’ve got a squad car over here blocking one lane of traffic. We’ll see what we can see.

PenguinSix:

Here come the police teams—DC Police and Park Police. Yeah, that’s the crime scene. It looks like it’s just down from the bridge. Let’s see what we can see.

Alright, we’re down in the park. The police are down here—they’ve actually blocked the road a bit. Let’s see if we can get around them.

They’re leaving. It looks like maybe the scene is processed, or maybe it’s not their problem anymore. Jurisdiction between DC Police and Park Police is always so crazy.

So it’s down in there in the river, but I don’t think they’ve cleared it out yet.

Okay guys, we’re up above the scene now. Back down there, you see the police cars and, of course, Rock Creek.

We had to come up here because the main path is closed, but we’ll go back down. I have not seen the body, thankfully. I don’t really like seeing bodies, but it’s part of the job.

Alright, they’re down there. Fire department is showing up, trying to figure out what they do next. Okay, let’s head back over, see what’s going on.

TV crews have shown up as well, so we can stand by them. We did have a bit of rain last night, so the water levels were a bit higher, but it’s pretty shallow here.

Bigger police presence now than there was earlier. They’re trying to figure this one out. Could have been that someone fell down the side of the mountain.

They’re confused too—they’re still looking at the possibility that they fell. So, you see the problem—the water is really shallow, and I don’t know how a body could float down this little amount of water.

But if they were hiking on the trail, there—you see those steps—and fell, they’d fall into the water pretty easily. Probably be kind of injured.

I don’t know. You guys can’t see it—it’s in the trees there. But that is one of their helicopters coming out of this tree.

We’ll get him in focus in a second. That is a VH-3, the helicopter used as Marine One and Marine Two. He’s out of focus because the trees are in the way, but they’re doing practice drills at the Vice President’s house today.

Okay guys, after a day of chasing fires and bodies, let’s get some food, simply because I’m starving, and this place is nearby.

Alright, fried chicken and fries, and helicopters are coming in for another landing drill.

Okay guys, what started as an ordinary boring day ended up, well, a lot of running around. We filed a few photos—you’re seeing here. I’m going to head out tonight and relax.

I will be back tomorrow, though, to show you more of Washington, DC. No matter what it is, we’ll be out there. Thanks a lot for watching—see you tomorrow.