Incident: Garage Fire
As we were pulling away from the fire hall, our radios came to life and we found ourselves responding to a structural fire. The police were already on scene and were reporting smoke coming from the garage,
Of course, the first thing that we noticed when pulling up on scene, was the smoke. Next, we couldn't help but notice all the cops surrounding the residence, 3-4 cop cars at least. Just as the air brake was set, I jumped from the rig. One of the officers came running over and told us that there were boxes of clothes burning in the garage.
We made our way into the badly cluttered garage and sure enough, there were a few boxes which appeared to be clothes, fully engulfed in flames. I used my hook to start pulling the boxes on fire out and to my surprise, I lifted what appeared to be a burning pair of men's underwear that got snagged on my hook out!
I held up the burning pair of underwear and said to our Captain, "Man alive! That had to be one heck of a spicy meal to have set this pair of underwear on fire!" After we got all the boxes pulled out, we used our thermal imager to make sure that there were no hot spots left in the garage.
Being the curious person that I am, afterwards I asked one of the cops still on scene what the story was with this call. He indicated to me that they had showed up that afternoon to arrest the guy for breech of parole. The guy ran from his house straight to the garage, possibly to hide when he saw the police cars show up. The guy obviously could hear the police officers outside the big garage door and in a vain attempt to get away, he lit the boxes on fire and then bolted out the side door of the garage... directly into the arms of the waiting police officers. This bad guy had a history of running from the law, and this time, the police were well prepared.
Not sure what this guy was thinking. Not sure what his logic was for setting the boxes on fire either. He just added more charges to his already growing list of offences. And did he really think that the police would not be at both doors? Although some cops may look stupid, they really are not!
Any ways, made for a good call. Some times, it's the silly calls that really make our day.
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Lieutenant
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