Did I waste the fire department’s time?

[u/Kevsterific]

I was out for a trail run and got to a clearing at the top of a big hill that I could look out and see off in the distance.

I saw a big flame about 1km away (as the crow flies)

I called the fire department to report and stressed that while it looked like a big flame I didn’t know exactly where (I was able to give a street name by looking at google maps). In hindsight I didn’t see any smoke accompanying it and I didn’t think to mention it.

The dispatcher said there’s something called a burn off (I think that’s the phrase he used) in the area, but I told him I didn’t know what that was or looked like.

He said they’d send someone over to check it out but I’m just worried either it wasn’t actually a fire a was seeing or it was the burn off the dispatcher mentioned and I just wasted their time on a false alarm

I took this picture after I hung up, I wish I had a way of showing them what I saw so they could better determine what I was calling about

[u/Chicken_Hairs]

Amongst ourselves, we'll bitch about false alarms.

But you're not a firefighter, you don't know about burn-offs and all the other stuff in our area like we do, and deep down, we all know it.

If you're not sure, call. No matter what anybody says, it's our job.

[u/Eatsbakedchicken → u/Chicken_Hairs]

I’m a career guy in a big city and I don’t even know about burn off’s. We pretty much exclusively fight high rise fires so when it comes to wildland im pretty clueless. I forsure would’ve called this in if I was just walking by

[u/Typical-Efficiency31 → u/Eatsbakedchicken]

I hate to break it to you but Ft. Lauderdale isn’t a big city hahaha

[u/Chicken_Hairs → u/Typical-Efficiency31]

My RA is less than 12k.

Ft Lauderdale is plenty big to a lot of us. 😁