Fire Fighters Share The Dumb Things They've Had To Save People From
We're lucky we have responsive emergency services as close as a phone call away when we need them. Flick on the news, and you'll see stories of fire fighters achieving heroic rescues and putting out blazing buildings.
But 9-1-1 also gets called on the silliest, stupidest human errors you can imagine - and those are the stories we want to hear.
We asked fire fighters to tell us the dumbest things they've had to save people from. The takeaway? It's usually the callers themselves.
35. I'm a big kid now.
Austin, TX, HEB, circa 1990.
A little girl needs to use the toilet. She locks the door, manages to get onto the toilet and use it all by herself - she's a big girl after all!
But, the toilet is tall and getting down is scary. Better wait for mom to come help. Except, she can't get in, because the little girl locked the door and is too scared of the five inches from her feet to the floor and so just sits there crying while sitting on the toilet.
The firemen break down the door and the little girl is saved.
Yep, I was a stupid kid.
34. Easy, rider.
A motorist had a bad alternator and the car died while she/he was driving. The electric lock control stopped working.
We were dispatched for a person trapped in a motor vehicle. On arrival, the advice was given to manually lift the lock knob.
You can easily tell the ones who will not survive the first 24 hours of the zombie apocalypse.
33. Aerial circus act.
Former Fire and Rescue Firefighter here. I have helped release several dogs and children stuck in the mechanism part of a recliner chair.
Also a bird stuck in a tree, go figure.
I didn't know what to think when we received the call. We proceeded to the address to see a bird, you guessed it, in a tree.
It was the highest palm tree I’ve ever seen, this one guy on our crew loved to play the hero, so of course with the ladies looking he wanted to do the heroic act, we said, "
Ok, Sunshine, have at it." We put the ladder out and off he went to rescue this bird, turns out the bird had it’s leg caught in one of the palms.
I should also add that a wild bird stuck in a tree in a state of pure panic is going to be ticked off, I don’t know what was louder the bird squawking and biting him, his screams or us on the ground laughing.
Got it out, bird was fine, our guy was scratched up to bits though.
Image by SueChem from Pixabay
32. Multi-purpose dumb.
I was a volunteer firefighter many years back. One summer, after a long period of no rain, two good old boys decide to have a few (dozen) beers and take their Jeep into a nearby field to go off-roading.
Well, ~2 ft. tall corn stalks that are bone-dry wind-up getting jammed up into the undercarriage, which, on a 90+ degree day, turns out to be hot enough to ignite a fire.
The owner of the field sees the situation unfolding from their house and calls for fire and police.
Given the proximity to my location, I go directly to the scene after hearing the page go out and see these two morons trying to drive the Jeep faster and faster to put the fire out.
Eventually, the engine gives out, but they won’t leave the car. I physically had to reach-in, burning my arms in the process (since I didn’t respond to the station first to get my turnout gear), and pull them out - somehow, they decided that remaining in the car would slow down the flames.
And because they thought it was a good idea to continue driving a burning vehicle around a dry field, we now have a significant brush fire and have to call mutual aid from another county to help douse the fire.
State Police get involved, I have a nice trip to the hospital. And those dummies lose their Jeep and the remainder of their booze.
