Now get into this one - making trouble for my characters

I'm coming towards the end of  my rewrite of my novel Starfire, and approaching what should be the Supreme Ordeal for my main character.

The scene is a big shoot-out between pirates and the law.  And, just when the goodies look like they're winning, another character turns traitor and begins shooting. It sounds like it ought to make a great set-piece action scene, but it has a big problem.

That problem is that my viewpoint character (and, unusually, there is only one viewpoint character in this book) is a passive observer of the scene.  The way I wrote it, she was safely on her ship, passively watching vid of the action on the docks outside.  The biggest action scene in the book, and my viewpoint character wasn't even there!

But my character Ria is an ordinary civilian, so there's a limit to the number of times she can get caught up in dangerous gun battles by accident.  And I'd already had her involved in a couple of them  by this stage.  I'd used up my quota, and I needed to find another way to get her into danger.

I had to do something different.  I couldn't justify her foolishly running onto a dockside knowing people were fighting.  So I flipped things around.  I put her on the dockside, and running for safety, when the trouble breaks out.  And while the pirates and security guys are shooting it out behind her, she's running for the safety of her ship.  So far, so good, but where was the immediate danger to her?  I didn't want her to get accidentally shot, so I needed another threat.

Enter the plot device of the stack of burning flammable bales on the dockside.  They're awaiting loading to a ship, and my character has to run past them to reach her own ship.  And with weapons blasts buzzing about everywhere, it was inevitable that a stray one would slam into those flammable bales and ignite them in a sheet of fire.

I still need to work out the detailed choreography of the scene.  I think I'm going to have to move Ria closer to the threat than she currently is when the bales burst into flame.  But I think the basic idea works.  And I've caused serious trouble for my main character that puts her in real danger.  And that's the hallmark of a good Supreme Ordeal.