The Raging Inferno
March 11, 2010
by Sebastian
1 comment
Well, maybe it wasn’t that bad, but it necessitated my first 911 call of my life so I’m sticking with it.
Ok, I’ll back up and start from the beginning: as I was walking my dog this morning, one of the houses that I walk by was glowing. I’m not sure if you’ve ever seen a house on fire before, but it was an amazing site. Since I had never seen a house on fire before, I had no idea what was going on, and I didn’t want to make a prank call to 911 for someone’s weird neon lights display.
So I walked past the house with my dog. On the way back (for the record, my morning walk is down a block and back, so it’s not like I wasn’t keeping track of the house the entire time), the windows started popping out from the fire. I didn’t have my phone with me, but a woman was walking by and was almost up to me, so I waited for her. When she came close, I said “Excuse me, do you have a phone? I think that house is on fire.”
To which I got absolutely no response at all. I tried again, this time adding a “ma’am” to sound polite. Still nothing. At this point in time all the windows are popping out of the house and flames are starting to poke out. And so I ran past the woman, up to my place, got my phone, and called 911.
I have to admit that I was impressed by the response time. After I called, gave them the address, and hung up, the first fire truck showed up in about 90-120 seconds. Soon after that the first police car showed, and then more fire trucks. By the time the third fire truck had arrived, two police cars had closed off the street on both sides to traffic and the first truck had a guy with a hose spraying down the house. By the time the second guy joined in with a second hose, the fire seemed to be pretty much contained. Which I count as impressive considering just moments before it was flaring up pine trees on both sides of the house and seemed to be raging along pretty impressively.
All told, 5 of the long fire trucks showed up, 3 police cars, 2 fire marshal trucks, 1 EMT ambulance, and 2 news helicopters. And that, if you haven’t figured it out yet, is why you get renter’s insurance. Do you have any idea how much that must cost?
Ten minutes after I called 911, the fire was well under control. 15 minutes later, it was out and the firemen were starting to cut into the house to see what started it. I still haven’t heard what that was, but on the bright side there was no one in the house and no other houses were burnt.
Ok, now I have to go back and talk about the woman again. What. The. Fuck. I understand that it is 5:30 in the morning, and that you don’t want to interact with anyone at that time because the chances are good that they are crazy, but wouldn’t you respond when you heard the words “house on fire”? Or maybe your ipod was up too loud and you didn’t hear me. Again, is that a great strategy for walking around by yourself at 5:30 am? Deaf to the world? If I had been someone intent on harm, you never would have even known I was coming after you until it was too late.
Or do you just not care that a house was burning down right next to you?
