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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u/DMVSPIRITS May 29 '25

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

13

u/BigWhiteDog Retired Cal Fire FAE (engineer/officer) and local gov Captain May 29 '25

Had that happen. Was dispatched for an alarm sounding at a private residence in a country club neighborhood out in the country. I had never in my career had this kind of call amount to anything so mentally had sort of checked out. I will never forget coming through a grove of trees to see a huge black column and me praying it was a control burn. Nope. Fire blowing out of the attic of a 5000 sq ft house which was 1/4 involved and my next due had just been dispatched and was 10 out. Talk about going from zero to sixty in a flash!

Complete side note: we were on this thing for hours as would be expected and while we were deep in overhaul a couple of high end security guards show up and get with the prevention officer that was investigating the cause (fire captain that is a combo of Fire Marshall and cop). We get told to stay out of one of the bedrooms and just flood it then they stood guard over the house and that room. Next day a Sheriff's detective and the prevention officer show up at my station to talk to me about what I saw on arrival. Turns out there was a lot of gold coins in a safe in the bedroom, the fire was of suspicious origin, and I later learned that the owner was involved in money laundering among other crimes and eventually went to prison. I documented the hell out that fire! 🤣

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u/DigiReagan May 29 '25

Dispatch definitely should’ve attempted to get a hold of keyholder. The alarm company dropped the ball there too.

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u/BigWhiteDog Retired Cal Fire FAE (engineer/officer) and local gov Captain May 29 '25

It was all weird, and not just the gold or the crimes. The alarm was unmonitored and was an external bell like you'd see for a school or the like. I'd never seen any like that in a residence. The home owner didn't want to pay for the monitoring part of the service apparently. The alarm sounding was called in by a neighbor as a fire alarm, a neighbor who for some reason didn't bother to call us back when he finally looked outside at the house and saw smoke pouring out of it. The investigator asked him why he didn't call back when seeing the smoke and he had no answer. The house backed up to a country club golf course and we also never found out why no one there called it in either.

The other fun part was that, due to some graft back when the small development was built, there were no hydrants and we had to lay LDH about 2 blocks to where we could set up a water tender (tanker for you east coasties) dump point. The tenders had to draft from a canal maybe a mile away?