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TIFU by attempting to save a small child from a house fire

This happened a good 10 years ago, but I've been way too embarrassed to even think about posting it here. I guess today is the day.

I used to rent a house in a sleepy suburban part of town. Quiet street, pretty rare to see anyone walking around sort of place. The entire block was single family homes. One such quiet day, early October if I remember right, took my dog out for his morning walk. As we get to the top of the street, I see a dense plume of smoke coming out of the corner house's chimney. I knew the tenants who used to live at this place and was happy when they moved out (their dog attacked my dog at one point) - thought it was a bit weird since I thought the place was unoccupied.

I kept walking but for some reason my brain really found the whole thing unusual, so I turned around and went back for another look.

It smelled a lot like wood burning and the amount of smoke got me worried. I knocked on the door.. No response. Knocked again and waited.. No one came to the door, but I thought I heard a child's voice inside. Now I'm really fucking worried!

I call 911 and explain what I'm seeing. I told them it's probably nothing, but could they send someone over to check it out?

  • "Sir we have to treat this as a house fire, we're sending resources."

*gulp*

I wasn't far from the fire dept and it didn't take long to start hearing the sirens. All the sirens. OMG. A few minutes later the first truck shows up - and another.. and another.. and another. I realized pretty quickly that whatever was happening, most likely did not warrant this much trouble. But as soon as the first guy stepped off his truck and walked towards the house, I knew I fucked up. I still occasionally wake up in the middle of the night and remember him looking at me with the most disappointed look I had ever seen.

As a professional fire fighting wizard, he instinctively realizes houses have basements and that you can look at the fucking chimney so see whether it's coming from the basement or the main living area. I guess some of these guys also know what a fireplace is. A couple of them go around the back of the house and soon walk back to the front yard with a robe wearing dude, wondering wtf just happened and why someone would call the fire dept for using a fireplace.

Turns out he worked as a caretaker for the landlord and would sometimes stay in the basement unit. It all made sense of course but.. I was just trying to help :(

TL;DR: called 911 on what I thought was a house fire involving a small child, a bunch of fire trucks show up to find a guy enjoying his fireplace.

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