r/Firefighting • u/PhilosopherFull819 • May 29 '25

Ask A Firefighter Firefighter told me I shouldn't have called.

The smoke detector was going off from the car port underneath the garage apartments behind the 4plex I live in. I walked outside and saw no smoke or fire and found the detector. I mulled over reaching up and disabling it myself but I opted to err on the side of caution and report it. A truck pulled up minutes later and I showed the guys what I saw. The tallest one reached up and pulled it off and took out the battery. Another one got angry and said that I should "grow up" and "feel embarrassed" for calling. To which I replied I didn't want to turn off the alarm without confirming there was no danger that I couldn't see myself and thanked them and told them to have a nice day and they left. I imaging he was stressed and tired but can't help feeling like I did something wrong.

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399

u/J_TheCzech Career FS | EU/Czech May 29 '25

I mean- as someone from a central station I can imagine half the guys getting just as moody over a call like that- you calling wasn't wrong considering dispatch lifted them, but yeah if anything the guy should had kept the emotions for private imo. Don't feel bad

259

u/frisbeeicarus23 May 29 '25

100% this. We all joke around about calls like this at the station... but to act like this to a citizen is not cool.

61

u/DMVSPIRITS May 29 '25

Cuz we all know 1 in 100 ends up being very real

71

u/yungingr May 29 '25

And the day you blow off a call or respond half assed because you've had 99 false alarms, and it turns out to be a cooker......gonna be hard to look in the mirror after that.

22

u/firestuds May 29 '25

In my old volly department we had lots of industrial buildings and were often called to automatic alarms. One of them was at least twice every week, one time because of food on the stove, another for steam buildup from a fridge, it was already unusually often. Then one weekend, it was EIGHT. TIMES. The fourth time we could barely get the engine filled up. That shit was dangerous, you could really see people stopping to take those alarms seriously because one company just couldn’t get their shit together. You’d think weekly bills would work wonders but it never went away as long as I was there

12

u/yungingr May 29 '25

It's a very real problem, and one my department is facing as well. We've got a nursing home, assisted living facility, and day care that are good for at least one automated alarm malfunction call per month, and anymore, if more than myself and a couple rookies show up, I consider that a win. (Big surprise....they all use the same alarm vendor....)

There is going to come a day that it's real, and we're going to be standing there with our pants around our ankles

5

u/TheAdvocate May 29 '25

Nearby retirement communi contracts with their local house to pay for like two calls a week. Whether there is one or not. Kinda nice, if they go by on Sunday at a certain time it’s literally just a training run and that means they didn’t have x amount of calls the prior week. Not sure if that’s normal

3

u/Minimum-Asparagus-73 May 29 '25

Shoot. Major level 1 trauma center here has at least 1 alarm every few days. The size of the building requires multiple engines and ladders to pre stage before they even get command to clear it.

1

u/flatpipes May 30 '25

Nah, still pretty easy to live life. I've had 2, accept you can put the number in the hundreds of false calls. That's ridiculous to expect every call that comes in with a single caller, nothing visible, as an actual fire.