Concerned Neighbors

Sometimes it's nice to have neighbors that watch out for you. My neighbors have on occasion, raked my leaves and put away my trash bins while I've been on duty so that my wife doesn't have to do it. So it should be no surprise that when a citizen saw smoke coming out of his neighbors house he was concerned. She immediately went over to the house and pounded on the door while yelling for the owner. After several attempts she decided to call 911.

We were toned out for a smoke investigation. We run on so many of these that are false alarms that we are probably a little to relaxed. We got dressed and headed out. As we were approaching the house we could see smoke coming from the windows, but not much. My captain had me hang tight at the engine while he investigated. If we need a hose line he can just radio for me. After a minute or so my captain notified dispatch that it was a stove fire and that it was out. He then asked my engineer and I to grab the fan. Then, while the captain was talking to the owner outside, we went through the house opening and closing windows and doors eliminating as much smoke as possible. We found that the owner had been watching a movie in his bedroom and not that kind that he'd want his neighbor to know about.

So once we were all back in the rig, we figured that the owner must have started cooking lunch on the stove. He was then distracted by the porno in the bedroom, enough so that he didn't notice the smoke and either didn't hear, or ignored the neighbor. Imagine if his house had burned down. How do you explain that to the insurance company.... "I didn't notice the front half of my house was on fire  because...."