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thedeadlyhookWell, that was neat. Today I stopped a fire.
On my morning walk, heading up toward Golden Gate Park, I heard this sizzle-popping sound. Retraced my steps a few yards to investigate and holee-hell, an overhead electrical line had thrown up sparks and smoke, fried through its casing, and was now burning merrily. Like a little stovetop fire, about twelve inches away from the building the power line went into.
I asked another passerby if he had a phone; he didn't, and suggested I ring an apartment bell instead. Which I did - climbed the stairs, buzzed the buzzer closest to the problem and told the lady who answered the door. And then told some other residents as they were coming out to go to work. Everybody was fairly open-mouthed - I mean, there you are, coming out of your building in the morning, and here's this minor conflagration doing its campfire-style thing, right there in the open air. Inside of fifteen minutes, a firetruck rolled up, and about five or six people and four big dogs from the building got to stand on the sidewalk and rubberneck as one of the firefighters went up to the second floor apartment and put out the little fire with an extinguisher. The fire was right outside the window.
Apparently, one of the residents told me, they'd turned on the heat that morning, and all the lights had dimmed; I also heard another resident say the same thing had happened when she'd been using her hair dryer. Obviously an overload and yeah, old building. Which reminded me of one of our old apartments, the one in which the lights sometimes dimmed when the refrigerator kicked on. Scary.
But what really scares me to think about is how long a little fire like that might have burned without anyone noticing, if everyone had been at work. Outside, no smoke, nothing to set off a fire alarm, but how long would it have taken to have burned its way up the line until it reached the building? Or ignited one of the other lines?
Really scary.
On my morning walk, heading up toward Golden Gate Park, I heard this sizzle-popping sound. Retraced my steps a few yards to investigate and holee-hell, an overhead electrical line had thrown up sparks and smoke, fried through its casing, and was now burning merrily. Like a little stovetop fire, about twelve inches away from the building the power line went into.
I asked another passerby if he had a phone; he didn't, and suggested I ring an apartment bell instead. Which I did - climbed the stairs, buzzed the buzzer closest to the problem and told the lady who answered the door. And then told some other residents as they were coming out to go to work. Everybody was fairly open-mouthed - I mean, there you are, coming out of your building in the morning, and here's this minor conflagration doing its campfire-style thing, right there in the open air. Inside of fifteen minutes, a firetruck rolled up, and about five or six people and four big dogs from the building got to stand on the sidewalk and rubberneck as one of the firefighters went up to the second floor apartment and put out the little fire with an extinguisher. The fire was right outside the window.
Apparently, one of the residents told me, they'd turned on the heat that morning, and all the lights had dimmed; I also heard another resident say the same thing had happened when she'd been using her hair dryer. Obviously an overload and yeah, old building. Which reminded me of one of our old apartments, the one in which the lights sometimes dimmed when the refrigerator kicked on. Scary.
But what really scares me to think about is how long a little fire like that might have burned without anyone noticing, if everyone had been at work. Outside, no smoke, nothing to set off a fire alarm, but how long would it have taken to have burned its way up the line until it reached the building? Or ignited one of the other lines?
Really scary.
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Date: 2006-01-20 12:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-20 01:06 pm (UTC)there are people who probably would have just kept on walking.
Now that's really scary. I'd like to think anyone who saw it would've called it in. The thing that weirded me out was how easily it could have just not been spotted until it had already become a huge problem.
The thing I used to hate most about living right downtown in SF (well, aside from the horrific traffic, and the way drivers tend to treat pedestrians as targets, even in areas with a lot of foot traffic) was the fire engines - all day, every day, it seemed, you'd get the big blaring horns and the screeching sirens. I don't think I've ever lived more than four or five blocks from a local firehouse, and sometimes... well, the noise gets tiring.
I think I've got a little better appreciation now why they're there. Lots of old buildings, lots of old wiring... probably they answer calls like this all the time.