NOT!
Yesterday on my way back to the Path station on 33rd by 6th, my travling companions and I passed a garbage can that was smoking. This alarmed me because smoke is a sign of fire and a garbage can on fire can cause problems for someone walking past it.
Fortuantly (I thought) there was a car with police officers right across the road. I start walking to where they are so I can let them know about this problem which although they were facing the can they must not have seen. As I and some strangers attempt to get their attention they drive awy. The group is now shouthing at them but they seem to either ignore or not hear us.
I then spy a police officer a few feet from where the car was. I walk over to him and say the garbage carn there is smoking. He says what can? I point the one direcly in front of us across the street. It’s the only one with a grey cloud over it.
He says that someone must have thrown a cigarette into it.
I know it wasn’t an emergency that requires 12 ladder truycks to come but he should have called the FD to come and extinguish it. You don’t know what was in the can and there is the posibility that someone walking past would get burnt throwing out garbage. There also was the slim possibiilty that it was an explosive device that malfunctioned.