alt Hacker NewsHa, in the US but I had an issue with my chimney where there a strong smoke smell in the basement and an inexplicable hot spot on the back of my fireplace (no fire had been lit recently, and what creosote there was wasn't ignited). Not knowing what else to do, I called the fire deparment's non-emergency line and explained the situation.
They sent THREE full fire engines with sirens blaring and like 30 guys in full gear to my house, chief came out too. All to smash out the back of the fireplace and dispose of some smoldering embers that had collected behind it.
Seemed like an overreaction, now I'm wondering if they were just bored and decided to use me as a training exercise. Granted I'm also just some goober on the phone, they're under no obligation to assume I've reasonably assessed the situation.
Re the "fire": Turns out the original builders of my chimney skimped on bricks, and left a gap between the back of the fireplace and the exterior wall that shouldn't have been there. We were using the fireplace on the weekends, so some embers that cooled on their way up the chimney and fell back down collected in the gap, and decided to cook off a couple of days later. Weather was getting warmer, so instead of going up the chimney the resulting smoke down-drafted back into the house.
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My aunt had a small kitchen fire. She called 911 and asked "Could you send a firefighter with an extinguisher, please?"
The 911 operator responded "Honey, we only send them one way."
And like a dozen guys showed up.
> now I'm wondering if they were just bored and decided to use me as a training exercise
If there isn't anything else going on, the opportunity cost of sending more people to your thing is very low and the risk that it wasn't actually a small issue can become much larger.
It might seem like an overreaction when you only think about a possible fire. While their larger concern was probably the possibly imminent CO poisoning!
A building only has two statuses, as far as firefighters are concerned:
- There is no uncontained combustion on the premises
- There is uncontained combustion on the premises
"small uncontained fire" can become "no fire" on its own, it can stay "small fire" for a matter of hours, or it can become "big fire" in under a minute.
They have no way of knowing: and your description, which I presume is perfectly accurate, can't help them decide. For example, during the one minute you took to make the call, the embers could have caught cellulose insulation on fire, traveling up the outside wall, and beginning to melt vinyl siding. By the time they arrived, the building might be approaching structurally unstable, endangering neighbor properties.
So yes. They show up prepared to tear down walls and cut firebreaks and such. Once a house is 'on fire' time must be assumed to be of the essence.
Traditional fireplaces are VERY bad technology. Over 90% of the energy in the wood goes up the chimney and they ruin air quality in the house and they start so many fires. Even when not in use the chimney lets so much heated or cooled air out.
Not bored. They're looking to make their numbers to justify the next budgeting plan with the city.
Strong (and correct) indication of hidden fire--yeah, they're going to roll. And they are going to smash whatever they need to smash to get at the hidden fire.
Just because it didn't go big doesn't mean it didn't have the potential to.
Probably just regular ol' overtime abuse.
This seems like the kinda event that could very well have been disastrous, where a real fire response was actually warranted. The Oakland Hills firestorm of 1991 was caused by embers from a fire that had been put out the previous day but reignited in hot weather. Killed 25 people, injured 150, and destroyed over 3000 homes. One of the homes destroyed was the creator of SimCity, and so it also spawned the Oakland fire disaster scenario in SimCity 2000, as well as serving as the inspiration for The Sims.