Ten minutes ago, I leave the house to go to the cashpoint. A small child’s voice; “Excuse me!”
I start to walk over. “Yes?”
“There’s smoke coming out of that building”
There was. I join them outside the gates to the building (it’s a garden supply type centre, I think).
“Look, there!”
Short bursts of white smoke coming out of the door, which is open.
“Did you see anyone go in?”
“Yeah, there were a couple of people with hoodies on”
Aha, I think. Vandalism maybe? Or possibly just workers going in? The smoke seems to be dying down a bit. I think that probably that along with the short bursts of smoke suggest it’s a controlled fire, which I say to the kids.
“But i’m just going down to the shops, and if there’s still smoke when I come back in five minutes i’ll phone the emergency fire people*”
“Ok”
The kids didn’t look convinced. Good thing too; I come back five minutes later and find two fire engines, one of them pumping water into the building, the alarm going, people out on the street taking photos. Still didn’t look like that much smoke, but parts of the outside of the building were looking a bit burned/smoked.
So, there you go. Two small kids were more vigilant of fire than me. Don’t store your valuable, flammable items over here, k?
*Not being patronising. I just talk like this, sadly.
Some kids also approached me recently as I was leaving home in the morning to report a fire they thought they’d seen. Kids get such a bad press sometimes, it’s nice to know there are some sensible ones out there.
I didn’t think a probable controlled fire deserved me wasting the fire brigade’s time on. Clearly my judgement of the situation was bad, and i’ll be more careful in the future; in my defense, I would have called them when I got back, since it was more obviously an uncontrolled fire. I would have gone up to have a look, but the gates were locked (it has a big metal fence and gates, ones I wouldn’t be able to climb).
But yes; important thing is, my judgement was wrong, i’ll do better in the future (hopefully). Don’t worry, your point is well taken.
I guess I’m a little confused as to what sort of “controlled fire” might be going on inside a garden supply store. Smoke signals? I would have phoned it in, but then I’m a bit of a busy-body.
Edited to add: Just saw your post Rev. I’m not busting your chops or anything.
Just as a general FYI, five minutes is about how long it takes for a small fire to blossom into a major and difficult to control blaze (link). The basic mechanism is “flashover,” which is a sort of “tipping point” caused by the heating of the air in an enclosed space; it basically goes, small fire, small fire, small fire, small fire, HUGE GREAT FUCKING INFERNO. So every second counts.
