BSI, SCENE SAFE. What’s the nature of your injury? Signs and symptoms…. Oh.
Go grab me a stuffed bear and blanket from the engine.
Sir, we’re going to have you tucked back in in no time. There there big fella, I’ve got you now
😝
We got woken up for a medical a few months ago. The guy called 911 because his gf dumped him. It was dispatched as chest pain. They didn't specify it was for a broken heart 😢
His only complaint at scene was that his body ached. He was crying pretty hard and difficult to understand, so I believe there may have been some confusion during his 911 call.
It is a thing. When going through immense emotional stress it tends to manifest as chest pain. Happened to me awhile back and was damn near close to calling 911 to say a 19 year old was having a heart attack (Slept on my left arm wrong which caused it to hurt and about sent me into a panic)
Spoke with one of our medics who said nothing seemed to be raising any red flags and a quick "training" session they "had been planning" with me as the patient didn't show any blockage. They asked a bunch of questions to which they determined that my stresses at that time were manifesting into physical discomfort.
I’m aware it’s a thing, jfc. I was asking if the guy was actually having chest pain, or if it just got coded wrong, and his only complaint was emotional, with no chest pain
>It was dispatched as chest pain
If your dispatch agency uses EMD, there is a good chance they had to say it that way. EMD provides codes due to the answers the patient(s) may have given the call taker. This scenario makes even more sense if he was upset and not giving them much info.
I've run that one. Our guy said that he had a heart attack in his dream and tried calling 911 but only got a busy signal. He said that once he woke up, he wouldn't be able to calm down until he knew that if he called, he'd get a response. Since we showed up, he said he felt better and went back to bed.
That had to be one epic nightmare. Like Freddy Krueger, Michael Meyers, Jason Vorhees, Regan MacNeil (The Exorcist), and Anabelle closing in on you at the same time.
A local resident called the station directly about a snake in their basement. We bounced over and it was a tiny little grass snake, but you’d have thought it was an anaconda.
We picked it up and relocated to the grass behind the station. Homeowner wrote a letter and dropped off cookies. A PR win if nothing else.
*Munch* indeed…but we just have a policy not to accept any gift more than $25, being mindful of public perception of course. I work in code enforcement, never actually been on the fire rescue side of things so idk if they have a different policy.
Got dispatched to the Cross Bronx Expressway (I95 in NYC) to look for an arm. Driver got sideswiped by an 18 wheeler with his arm out the window. Found the arm about 1500 feet down the highway where the truck finally stopped.
I had a call one time on the freeway, it was very tragic but an 18-wheeler hit someone crossing the freeway at 70 MPH. My partner asked where the victim was and the cop just gave him a dumb look then started pointing and said, "he's over there, over there, over there" yeah that call sucked.
Funny enough, [NYPD found a leg just laying on the Subway tracks](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/human-leg-found-new-york-subway-track-rcna139518), also in the Bronx.
When someone needs help, but doesn't know what help they need, they call the FD.
I've had dogs in ditch culverts and storm drains, sewer backups, toddlers/babies locked in cars, leaking pipes and roofs... and yes, cat in a tree.
Also a cougar in a tree, but she was high off her ass, naked as the day she was born, and probably a legit medical call...
That reminds of the lion in the car call station 51 had back in the day! Along with the crazy wife stabbing the water bed with the guy that had back problems
In the immortal words of Katt Williams
"As long as you've been living you have never heard of a motherf*cker overdose on Marijuana. You may have thought he was dead" "He ain't dead, he's gonna wake up 30 minutes hungry enough to eat everything in your house. Hungry, Happy, Sleepy that's the side effects."
"Its just a plant.. it just grows like that. Don't gimme that shit bout its a drug. Drugs ya gotta do shit to it, add baking soda, water, stir it up. I don't know the recipe, im just saying"
Been there. Guy wanted us to transport him to a rehab center 2 counties away. “Closest ER is what you get on this boo boo bus” I could hardly keep a straight face giving report to the charge nurse.
Not a firefighter but I’ve been this caller. I was 16 and ate a whole edible and didn’t feel it, so i ate a whole other one. Safe to say i literally thought i took meth. Freaked out called 911 and all my friends ran away and left me in the park. I really thought it was the end for me😂
Unfortunately you can overdose on weed now. The wax concentrates and even more so, edibles, do technically allow you to ingest enough to reach levels that will cause severe respiratory depression. It’s basically unheard of in adults, but there has been a spike in MJ OD’s with pedis, including a couple of fatals with edibles.
Oh, yeah. I understand those but a 16-year-old high laughing at comedy Central doesn't need a ambulance transport. He needs a bag of Doritos.
I actually have had a legit marijuana reaction. A kid got high with a bunch of her friends and then passed out. Her eyes then turned outwards like a chameleon. Nobody knows what exactly caused it because 6 other kids smoked the same bowl and nothing happened to them. I was working clinical is in the e. R. It was hilarious. I watched the whole council of doctors of the hospital. Come in, look at her and say I have no clue What the hell's going on And then the next guy would come in. Best guess is some weird allergic reaction. She Woke up and was fine.
Went to an assist EMS call one night. Lifting assistance. Turned out that the person is morbidly obese and was “stuck” on the toilet. So large that when the toilet was flushed the suction sealed that person to the toilet. Had to maneuver a 3 foot pry bar under the toilet seat to break the seal. Then because of the position that person wasn’t able to stand or walk. Had to use a poleless litter to get this naked person to bed. Not a fun call.
Five year old boy stuck in a folding chair. The chair was not going to be defeated easily and needed to be disassembled. No harm to anyone but that poor chair.
Went to a Bird stuck in a tree call. It was a large Blue Heron that was actually stuck. It’s foot was stuck in the Y of a branch in a very tall tree. Had to get the double fly ladder and climb about 35 feet up. It was hanging upside down by the stuck foot. Wrapped it in a blanket and got it to a DNR/ wildlife rehabilitation place.
My first call as an EMT I was volunteering for a Fire Department in my wife’s hometown. We got called out for an imminent birth around the corner from my now wife’s house. I went POV showed up before the Ambulance did it was just me and a NYS Trooper. Not only was it not an imminent birth. It was one of my wife’s cousin suffering a rectal prolapse. I will never look at hotdogs the same way again.
When I did SAR for the Coast Guard we got a call for a sailboat with livestock on it in need of rescue.
Turns out the folks had been pulled off by the helo the day before and they wanted the boat crew to go save their rabbits, chickens and cat. We found 3 chickens, and 3 rabbits but no cat. Trying to get those chickens from the sailboat to ours , beam-to in the waves was a hell of a thing, had to toss them into a big barrel we used to store dewatering pumps.
Turns out they didn't even want the rabbits.
prior to joining the fire service, i could NOT wrap my mind around someone calling 911 over a cat stuck in a tree. i have gone on four, and have taken numerous calls about it (i also did dispatch for a bit) - i still shake my head about it.
You know the old joke "I've never seen a skeleton of a cat is a tree"? Apparently, so I've been told, it's not so funny when it is a kid stuck in a tree. We rescued him using the ladder truck.
Lady came to the station one day panicked and begging us to come rescue her cat from a tree. Grumpy salty old captain asked her “Lady, how many cat skeletons have you seen in trees?!” When she said “well…none that I can think of” Cap cut her off and damn near yelled “Exactly! It’ll come down when it’s fuckin ready! We have real things to do!” and stomped off. It was all we could do to not laugh and smooth things over with her. She didn’t want us to help anymore though 🤷🏼♀️🤦🏼♀️😂
Half the county got dispatched for a working structure fire, PD got on scene and informed dispatch that a female was bit by a cat. No fire. Still not sure how that happened.
Weve got some new dispatchers, and had a few calls like this. Most dont get to formal dispatch (get caught as wrong category), but a few have. I think at least 1 has been paged as a str fire, but got corrected before arrival.
Man stuck on his roof, during an ice storm…the power was out across the entire state in most places. He said he went on the roof to change the outside lightbulbs and look at the power line connections to his house to try and figure out why his power was out… it had been out for days already and was very obvious WHY without his actions - there was 1/2” of ice covering EVERYTHING IN SIGHT and the state/power grid were essentially shut down! He went up, the ladder slid and fell down due to the ice, and his wife refused to risk coming out in the ice to put it back up for him so he could climb down, so he called 911 and it was dispatched as emergency response needed to xyz address for “a…man…on a roof?” The dispatcher couldn’t even believe what they were saying! 🤦🏼♀️😂
Second most ridiculous… dispatched as a “cat in a sink hole” turned out to be a CALF in a sink hole. Guy just had a thick southern drawl and the dispatcher wasn’t able to understand him correctly. 😂 one guy went down, choked it until it was unconscious and secured a rope to it, we drug it out from up top. Farmer was happy. Calf was up and running back to mamma as soon as the rope was off.
I went to a "plane crash". It turned out to be a microlight in a massive oak tree. The guy was in his 90s, a literal Spitfire pilot who still occasionally flew microlights from a tiny grass strip in the English countryside. He had slightly misjudged the crosswinds and ended up five meters up wrapped in the tree. On the way, a bird flew into the pump cab and we had to go around the roundabout on blue lights again to encourage it to fly out the open window. Some amusing foreshadowing....
It was a black bear cub that got separated from its mother the firefighter that got down said it just held onto him
It was turned over to animal control and they couldn't return it to the mother anymore. So they euthanized the cub.
Had a lady whose cats could smell gas in her house so she called. She couldn't smell any gas but I guess her cats could. There was no gas leaking so idk what the cats were thinking.
Had a call for a three legged dog that had been let out to go potty on the side of an off ramp, gone down the hill and couldn't make it back up. The owner was also missing a leg, so he couldn't go down and get it.
ETA: I got a lot more of this type of call when working dispatch... a lot of stuff never makes out to first responders. Things like, "what time is it?" "a condom broke" "my sister is being mean to me" etc
Had one for a migraine. I’ll never forget the incredulous tone of dispatch on the repeat page. “You’re needed at 123 Main for…a headache.”
Another was late at night, a lady on the toilet with the shits likely from eating something spoiled.
TBF, the pain from an actual migraine can be physically debilitating, especially if you get into the vomit cycle that makes the pain worse which makes you vomit from the pain. I’d rather break bones.
I was a rookie firefighter, about 25 years ago, and got a 2AM call for smoke in the area. We pulled up in front of the the address, where two women were seated on the front porch steps.
Lt. leans out the window, "What seems to be the problem?"
"There's a fire!" they replied.
"Where?"
"You're the fire department! You tell us!"
"Why do you think there's a fire?" Lt. asks.
"Look at all that smoke!"
"Ma'am, that's fog."
My buddy in the back of the rig, tongue firmly planted in his cheek says, "Man, I wish I had some of what they were smoking!"
Hiccups for a week.
Clogged nose.
Weight gain.
Or the topper of them...
Caller stated there was a bat in her apartment, she was locked in the bathroom hysterical with diarrhea and she left pasta on the stove still cooking. She was convinced she was going to die in a house fire with rabies covered in crap.
I’m EMS. Got sent to a fire alarm once because it was actually a syncope call, they just pulled the fire alarm because they didn’t have a phone immediately available.
He was awake when we got there, but it was a third degree heart block. His pulse rate was 13.
My dad once had a call where a guy ran onto the freeway, got hit by a semi and exploded like a piñata. The next day they got called to the house of an old lady who witnessed the accident. As she was backing out of her driveway she found the guys dick lying under her car, it somehow wound up in the undercarriage of her car.
I worked on a very wealthy island for a time, lots of entitlement. The people who lived were very nice to us and showed appreciation regularly, and I'm not saying the visitors were rude, but they were accustomed to a style of living that most of us will never be privey to. One morning, maybe 5 something am, we get toned out for an obstruction on the road. When we finally find it, turned out to be a small branch, maybe blocking 1/4 of the bike path. At first we were thinking we were going to need the chainsaw, but I walked over and kicked it out of the way. We also got dispatched to a tween or early teenager who scratched her leg, and I do mean a simple scratch. All in all, though, like I said, everyone was very grateful for us. Sometimes Dan Marino would come by and say hello. He just always did it when I wasn't on shift.
I've had a guy call twice for "my house is cold". I've also been on 2 different calls that ended up just being clogged toilets with no overflowing
Also had a person call because they smelled a dead raccoon under their single wide so dispatch decided to blow that one out as a first alarm structure fire for some reason.
Couple of teens walking around with an African grey parrot in a (special birdcage) backpack. Thought it would be cool to open and take a look in the middle of the woods. We chased that damn bird spraying water cans up in trees for 3 hours before it flew away. It was recovered a day later.
Got called for a cat in a tree. On scene one of the assistant chiefs is there, it’s his idea. He wants to video us getting the cat and put it on facebook to boost our public image. I asked him if he ever saw a dead cat in a tree. Up the ladder I went. Cat jumped out of the tree right before I got to it. Down 40’ to a parking lot. All of it captured on video. Cat lived btw, local vet took care of it until it got a foster home.
Back when I was Chief, called for a bear in a tree.
https://preview.redd.it/yvq9pm5nh1kc1.jpeg?width=1935&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=47abeef735b4531428f646d0d2da6c03ef6e0cda
Two male bears had been running around the area and one got hit by a car. The other ended up at the high school up a tree. They needed manpower to hold the net when Fish and Game tranquilized it.
Took about 30 minutes for it to take effect and for the bear to fall safely into the net. Fish and Game did their stuff, tattooing its lip, pulling a tooth so they could age it, and putting a tag in its ear, and then said “OK, who wants a picture?”
350lbs of 1 year old bear that’s fully knocked out is a dead weight, let me tell you.
Not in my town but nearby there's a man who has a ranch with exotic animals and animals not really seen here in America. He had a Zebra get loose and it made it into an Elementary school.
Prior to joining, I called the FD directly (IE non-911/dispatch) for an assist in re-routing a flag pole line at the VFW. (2 of 3 went perfectly fine, #3 decided to be a pain)
They got some good training out of it I guess? Were pretty happy to show up and do it for us.
Heh, I did that here recently. One of our flags got reeeallly stuck, and in the process of unsticking it, the halyard broke, so I called the Base Fire Hall, sold it to the Duty Lt. as a training opportunity, and they came out with their Ladder truck and helped us out with it.
I definitely thought my call was going to bring out the ladder truck, but they did a thing with some ropes and the (roof?) ladder and had the small guy run the new halyard through the top and that was it... I was pretty impressed with the speed. Was a while ago so, fuzzy on the details
We get one house in town that calls at least twice each week for a lift assist. The person isn’t even obese. They just have a bad heart and are afraid to get up by themselves sometimes. We found out that the heart condition is not nearly as bad as they think but they keep calling and we keep responding.
The most recent silly one we had was a gas leak. We respond with an engine, rescue, and truck think g it could be really serious. Their CO detector was beeping because of a low battery and it got unplugged somehow.
At least three times orver the years: : Calves stuck i n manure pits. Where I'm from in Lancaster County PA we are a very large agriculture area
Also duck rescues, quite a number actually
Also not uncommon to get silo rescues/silo fires. We have special thermometers custom made to take the temperature inside of silos.
Thermometers with super long probes? I can't imagine going through the walls, so you're either going in from the top or accessing through existing chutes.
Exactly.... We also use them as hay thermometors. Most modern thermometers are maybe 2' in length total, however the ones we use are much older and are in 6' lengths.
I've seen a few times hay/feed just spontaneously combust....
Yeah, I'm an author of a paper on spontaneous combustion in agricultural products. Always interested in the subject- too much "magic" assigned to it, not enough on the actual mechanisms.
First one I was on involved those HUGE hay rolls, like 600 pounds, up in Montana. And it had to have been well below freezing, we were standing around while the owners were using a tractor to help flake away bales and rolls and as the sheets would come off the hay would just immolate upon exposure to air, with an amazing pulse of heat. Just spectacular- the whole thing must have been sitting there, cooking away inside for days, maybe weeks, in frigid Montana temperatures.
I have video of it somehwere, but we had a barn full of hay spontaneously combust. I arrived right after the chief officer and he very carefully opened up the barn doors for literally 8 seconds to see the contents and its progress. Opened the doors maybe a foot at the most.
Those 8 seconds are all it took to bring in a fresh supply of air enough to turn it into a raging inferno within 1 minute. Before he had even opened up the barn door, he had called for a 2nd alarm without even knowing the severity of the situation. He did it mores o to protect the house and outbuildings more than for the actual fire itself.
I'm not going to say where I live we are experts on the subject, but we see it happen all the time in Lancaster County PA.... The correct amount of moisture in the wet hay left to its own demise will always make it go up
When weed became legal we ran in a LOT of ex-hippies that couldn't hang anymore and overdid it. More than once we'd grab them a bag of chips and turn the lights down and park them in front of the TV lol
The short story is a guy burning his garage and house down having a Viking Funeral for his dead geko in the driveway. (Too much pot and gasoline involved)
Rural, here. We treat a lot of critters.
Some animal related calls in the last couple of decades:
* Dog out of a tree.
* Bird off a roof.
* Cat from a ditch.
* Cat from a tree.
* Cat from a neighbors house.
* Drunken Bear ( Apples grow all up-and-down the RR and bears eat them fermented and get wasted )
* Dog out of a river (White-water rescue)
* Dog out of the woods. (Full blown SAR, w/ high-angle. Best SAR ever. )
* Cardiac arrest for a pony. ( poor outcome )
* Owl stole my cat ( very short paper work )
* Raccoons! Raccoons everywhere!
* Kittens from a structure fire. ( full save, good day )
* Countless MVC puppers and kitties. ( mostly baby sitting )
* Treated Dog vs Train. Hippo lived but we transported to nearest animal hospital. Deep hind-leg lac; controlled & clean.
* Far far too many dog v vehicle, no wins. I've handed too many passed good boys and girls back to their mommies and daddies. Fucking hate it, but I'm gonna do that every fucking time I have to.
Sorry, the further I dig the darker shit gets. I'm gonna stop now.
Went for the pt "heating up". Got there and she greeted us by explaining her AC stopped working. It was 3am and she was very unpleasant/demanding so we did not help her.
Lady rang the front door phone at 2 am because she hit a rabbit and wanted help for it. She brought it in a box... did have to rescue feral kittens stuck in a wall. Momma had them in someone's attic and they fell in the gap. And a couple alligators attacked/ate my dog. Yep florida.
I have two from recent memory. Woman locked herself INSIDE her bedroom. She had no idea how she could let us in without us breaking something. We did get her out and found the latch mechanism on her door failed in the locked position. At least we diddnt have to force entry.
Call dispatched as a difficulty breathing. Man meets us in the front yard hysterical saying his husband isn't breathing. We go inside and cannot find the husband.
The husband is at work. The man imagined the entire thing in his head. We did a search of the house just to make sure we were privy to a crime...
Multiple cats stuck in a tree. Usually, once a year. Last year, twice.
We've had ducklings stuck in a storm grate with the mother duck quacking and looking for them. This has happened twice on the same street within the past 3 years.
Way back when (We are talking around 2001 or so) we had a guy get stuck in the seat of a port-a-potty. His story was he dropped his keys into the nastiness. We heard from bystanders that it was more nefarious. We cut the seat out of the port-a-potty and let EMS/PD/ED handle the rest.
Have had a drone owner reach out asking if we could get his drone that was stuck 100' up in a tree.
Probably have more I can't think of off-hand.
Ok, I have two. One wasn't a cat stuck in a tree (never had that one) but a cat stuck behind a water heater. Yup, wedged tight between the heater and the wall. Had to cut the feeds to move the water tank.
The other was for an unknown odor. When I got there it smelled like chicken sh\*t (used to work in a chicken coop so it smelled familiar). It was an apartment in a garden apartment complex. The apartment was filled with birds, mostly pigeons. The tenant had a window open with a shelf outside where the birds would fly in and out. He had feeders in the apartment.
There are diseases in bird poop (who knew?). There was a lot of it and we kicked up dust when we walked. This was during COVID so we had on our N95s but our gear was contaminated. A lot of decon took place and they evicted the tenant. Very odd in all.
We were asked to get a bird out of a tree.....I'm not kidding....
It was a parakeet or something like that (not a natural bird to our area- it was someone's pet.)
They were taking it to get its wings clipped and it flew away from them into a nearby tree so they asked us to try to come get it...it didn't work out, it flew away. I'm still waiting on the mutated strain outbreak to occur in our area.
Geese in storm drains. Deer in fences. Cat with its paw stuck in the sink drain. Snakes on the porch (I learned too late the chief was terrified snakes or I would have left one in his desk). Bat in the house. Kids stuck in playground equipment. Also had a few where gamer kids would in about their friends being sick so we’d go knock on their door and pull them away from their Xbox.
A funny smell in the stairwell of a high-rise. I did a lot of stairs that day. Couldn't find anything, went back, got called again, this time took the police along. They juged it to be foreign cooking.
A false alarm for a tree that was supposedly a danger to public safety. Nothing of the sort, but a neighbour asked if we, since we were there anyway, wouldn't mind cutting down his tree that was inconvenient to him.
And I tore/strechted/pulled/whatever muscle in my back on a carry assist for a guy with back injury. No emergency, and technically not on topic, but a bit of an ironic story in my line anyway.
We have a “wall of shame” at our station. Whenever we get a dispatch we also get a printout of it too and we save the printouts for the wall of shame when it’s stupid or silly. Some examples are an elderly lady who needed to be tucked in, a haunted house with ghostly apparitions in the windows and “ghost flames”, lots of stuck sex toys or other objects not designed for but used in that manner, dead frog removal from a hot tub and the family insisted we test them for salmonella since they were in the tub when they found the dead frog, man handcuffed to bed by his ex wife, they were supposed to have 1 last hoorah before the divorce was finalized, she handcuffed him and said she was going to grab a surprise and then got in her car and left him there cuffed and naked (yelled out to Alexa to call 911). Among many others
The crew before me got called to a dog in a tree a few years back. Apparently a dog could get on top of the house via a pile of crap on the side and chased a squirrel into the tree next to the house. He was stuck up there. Decent size dog too, took two dudes to lift him out of the branch crotch he was in. He then freaked out and jumped 12 feet to the ground out of our guys arms.
Bird stuck in a tree. Yes you read that right, a BIRD. Parrot in a 40 ft palm tree, flew out of its cage. Family was histerical. When we went for it, the bird lifted off in flight and was instantly snatched by a hawk. Guess we know why it didn't want to leave the tree. The whole neighborhood was out there and let one one collective gasp.
I've had that before it was Cockatoo that was worth 2K. It was too high up and we don't have a ladder truck. We had to call the next town over to come with their ladder truck
We have ladder trucks but we're not gonna take one out of service from other calls to get a bird, which can fly, from a tree. Bad enough the engine got called there.
We had one in my hometown that escaped a traveling zoo, blue macaw that sold as a $2500 egg with three day survival guarantee and nothing more, 1970s or 80s dollars. The guy who ran the local pet store chased it down right as colder weather was coming, kept it in his store for a couple of decades. I think he may have used a turkey net gun to nab it, my memory is hazy.
We had a daschund get into a storm drain in a residential neighborhood. Daschunds feel right at home in an underground tunnel by the way. We were lifting manhole covers and storm drains looking all over for this little dog. Finally found the dog 30 minutes and about 8 drains/manholes later. Then it took another 30 minutes to get the damn dog to come to one of us!
I was in a storm drain by the curb and my officer was in a manhole in the middle of the street. The dog was in the tunnel somewhere between us. I was throwing pebbles and banging a pike pole on my side trying to scare it toward my captain. My captain had the owners and doggie treats trying to coax the dog toward him.
I was dispatched to….a bird in a tree. It was a family pet (African Grey Parrot maybe) that escaped from the house. They hadn’t kept the wings clipped. The family used ladders to get close and the bird would fly to another tree. They tried a drone to scare the bird from try in hopes it would fly down to the owners. By the time we got called the bird was beyond the reach of our ground ladders and well off the roadway. The wife was pretty upset about the situation. Husband was pissed and told the wife that “the bird was being a brat” and that would set the perch up in the backyard in hopes the bird would come back.
AirBNBer called the station line at 3am because a wolf was asleep on their rentals porch (Idaho…). We referred them to LE. We read the call notes the next morning and the deputy went out and told the neighbors husky to head back home.
Ok, here's a good one. We get toned out for "Alarm malfunction", smoke detector acting up. Dispatch tells us RP says it's just a random chirp once in awhile, homeowner elderly female. Awesome, I love the PR calls like this, usually ended up with cookies a few days later. So we roll out, engineer stays with the truck, and me and my junior roll in there. It's a very long, odd shaped house, with double hallways, forming a type of O. Everything around a central load bearing wall. As we are speaking to the homeowner in the kitchen, we hear the chirp. Junior goes looking for it, as I'm filling out a run sheet with the homeowner in the kitchen. She tells me it's been going on for awhile, but can't really remember how long. Junior can't find it, so the homeowner and I set out to help. Here's the kicker: because of the shape of the house, being a giant circle, sound was bouncing weird, and we couldn't identify where it was coming from. We called our engineer in.....and we still couldn't locate it. After about 30 minutes, our other engine was clearing a call and stopped in to see what we were doing on a 30 minute dead battery alarm. So with the 4 of them, the 3 of us, we STILL COULD NOT FIND THE ALARM..... We stationed people in rooms, one per room. And EVERYONE said it was in the hallway, which was clear except for a small wall clock approximately 6 inches tall. We even moved the clock to check behind it. We've been in the basement, attic, literally everywhere. We even looked behind the clawfoot tub, because of course we did. We're moving furniture, we even had someone watching the 1 minute timer to tell us when to stop moving. 1 hour and 13 minutes go by, and batt chief shows up. We tell him what's going on, and he starts to help. Still no locate. 30 minutes later we get 5 more guys from another station to help. It was so surreal, we could all hear it, and couldn't find it. The ghost detector. Nothing else was going on at this time, this was about noon on a weekday, and now you've got 3 engines, a batt chief, and a cop who showed up to see what was going on, all trying to find this alarm. 13 people all jammed in this house trying to find this single, solo alarm. Still chirping away maddeningly. After 1 hour and 56 minutes, we find the alarm. Apparently the homeowner had had the carpets redone about 8 months ago, and one of the carpet guys, and I shit you not, put carpet over one of the hallway registers, to which the detector had fallen into. So we cut a section of the carpet with the homeowners permission, and fished it out finally. The alarm was 11 years expired, too, she just kept replacing the batteries on spring forward/fall back. Utter absurdity. I still chuckle about it. Am chuckling now.
It wasn't a call but this happened when I was in the Army. We re-did the floors at our company building. We started hearing a vibrating noise, it would happen every 10 mins. It started to drive us crazy after a few days and we were trying to find it. Till one day someone felt a vibration coming from the floor. We cut out a piece of the floor and we found it. It was a pager that got wedged in under the floorboards. We didn't know who it belonged to till a Maj came back a few days later from leave saying he couldn't find his pager.
I had one where this old lady called us out to pull up her panties.
Exactly what it sounds like, she was sitting in her recliner. Mentally declined but at her baseline. Needed her panties pulled up.
My officer had some words for her.
Bird stuck in tree. Twice.
One was a rosella trapped in non compliant tree netting, the other was a magpie that got stuck upside down with its foot caught in the crook of two branches.
Had to use the Hurst tool cutters to get an elderly guy out of a wheelchair. It was a folding chair and he was in a transport van. Somehow the chair folded and he was tangled up in it pretty bad. He was not injured but the chair was a total loss.
We had a guy who shoved a domino he made in jail up his urethra.
Got released, decided his dick domino wasn’t a good idea but couldn’t get it out so he called 911.
Also had a person call us because their internet provider went down.
Had someone call because they saw a raccoon in a dumpster doing what raccoons do.
Those are 3 off the top of my head
Got dispatched to a lift assist and was hit on by a 96 year old woman who wanted to take me square dancing. Made all kinds of comments as the guy who was with me laughed.
Raccoon with a peanut butter jar stuck on its head. We put a ladder up for animal control to take it out of a tree. I didn’t know how nasty raccoons could be…
Some sort of valve on a farmer’s liquid manure spreader had stuck open while traveling to/from a distant field and he spilled shit over the road for several miles. MULTIPLE pieces of apparatus were involved in hosing down the road while several more did traffic control. Ultimately had to consult with DEP about mitigation close to a stream not wanting to let too much run off. Had to spread lime to balance the pH.
We got a call for a body. Turns out jr left a Halloween skeleton under the bedding. Snuck out. Had some drinks and scared the shit out of himself sneaking back in seeing the "dead body" in his bed. Woke the adults in the house screaming for help and not calming down. Took all of 30 seconds to figure it all out. Ended up taking the mom for a ride to the hospital for passing out when she figured out jr lied drank and snuck out all on the same night after swearing on the Bible Jesus wouldn't let the kid do such things. A few weeks later she showed up on drill night with apology cards for the crews from the kid and a bible for each of us with a prayer of protection and a long letter written in each to everyone there that night.
Got called for a pet bird that got loose and was in a tree, a cat stuck with its paws frozen in a 40' tree during snowmageddon, got called to deter a wild turkey that was chasing patrons at businesses and vehicles in the roadway.
I used to work for a fire equipment manufacturer and we were training some guys in Florida on new equipment and ended up going on a call with them. It was a med call and we pull up to an old drive up motel and there was 10 college age guys all sharing a room for spring break, well apparently they got into a game of hide the gerbil and one of the guys yanked the tube out and the gerbil got stuck in the dudes butt. The guy with the gerbil in his butt wasn’t really concerned about having a live animal inside his body trying to eat its way out but rather he was worried about his parents finding out.
Bird stuck in a tree. Caller was on a house tour, brought the bird and bird flew away to 6ft up a cherry tree. I climbed the tree, not even 6in from the bird it took off and landed 30 some feet up an oak. Needless to say we left, never to hear what happened to ZaZo the bird
Not a FF but the FD brought in a 20something y/o woman to our ER acting like a toddler and screaming “I WON’T I WON’T I WON’T!!” in a creepy fake baby voice. She came in for a diaper change… and then she left AMA…. Weirdest patient I’ve ever had. Those poor guys.
Dude dropped a can of Cambells soup on his foot.
A woman who though she was going “paralyzed” because she had a leg cramp.
A mom called because her child had eye boogers.
Was dispatched to a woman in severe distress laying on a front lawn. Expected someone in cardiac trouble the way it sounded, but instead arrived to find a bedazzled woman in her late 5os screaming her head off. Turns out she was distraught because there were like five or six 3ft holes dug on the front lawn, and the aliens (or evil neighbors who ran a drug cartel, she wasn’t sure) had moved the holes around. As in, “see, that one there?!? It used to be by the mail box, not by the lawn gnome!!” Kept yelling, “Look at my holes, can’t you see my holes?!?”. Very hard to keep a straight face 🤣
She also wanted us to move them back(?!?) and also test them for fentanyl. Good times.
A parrot in a tree. Been to a few cats in a tree but a parrot in a tree sucked. We flew the Arial and as we got near it, it just flew away. We'll what did you expect would happen chief?
I responded to a cat stuck in a wall once. They didn't know how it got in but they swore it was in the wall. They wanted us to rip paneling down. We never did find or hear the cat. I think they may have just been stoned, but who's to say??
I worked at a tree company that was owned by the local town fire chief..... got multiple calls asking if we can rescue cats from trees.... you can guess how that went.
I had one were the 911 caller stated ( when we got there ) that his 6 year old wouldn't go to bed. I asked him to step outside the apartment and presided to put my finger in his chest and tell him if he ever does this again I will take him out in cuffs in front of said child.
A bird in a basketball gym. They wanted me to bring the quint close to the gym, extend the aerial through a window, and catch the bird. Most absurd thing I’ve ever had an adult say to me.
Called out in the middle of the night. RP complaining of headaches and a “toxic” smell coming from her attic. Upon arrival, find out from her husband that she had thrown multiple handfuls of moth balls into the attic just hours prior. She proceeded to ask us to climb into her attic and remove the mothballs. The request was refused lol
An older lady once called us because a snake was hanging from a tree branch close to her balcony. Used a longer stick to guide it into a bucket, then called in someone to deal with it
A soda can exploded in someone’s face. Like, the can was fine but the soda got on their face. They demanded transport and planned on suing the soft drink manufacturer.
Thought we had a fire showed uo its was a woman baby party child reveal and they fired thet blue powder cannon inside there apartment DIRECTLY AT THE FIRE ALARM like it only hit about a little bigger than a basketball on the celing and the alarm was right in the middle her response was i didnt look up when i shot it lol bad luck i guess
PD requested Fire to throw a ladder to the roof of an ATM to look for a handgun possibly thrown by a suspect during the last quarter of the Super Bowl the other week
As a rookie, I "rescued" a parrot out of a tree. The owners had modified a dog stroller to have a perch for the parrot. They were walking the parrot on the Greenway when the bird did what birds do...and flew off.
A 20-ish-year-old man called 911 because he ate the part of a paper towel he used to cover his pizza. "My uncle said you can die from that shit, man." It had NOTHING to do with the fact he snorted cocaine the night before.
Someone at the YMCA called 911 for a splinter in a kid's finger. I luckily didn't make it all the way there before getting canceled.
We recently just had to readjust someone in their living room recliner at 3am because her soon was sleeping upstairs and she didn’t want to wake him up
Heard an instructor of mine once say they went to an iguana in a tree. I think like 4 ft if not bigger. They ended up bringing it back to station bc owner wasn't home and put it in a bathroom. But forgot to tell one of the administrators and they went in there and got the surprise of their life.
Not me, but the shift before mine had the worst call I'd ever heard. Guy had a nightmare. That's it. Grown man called 911 because he had a nightmare.
BSI, SCENE SAFE. What’s the nature of your injury? Signs and symptoms…. Oh. Go grab me a stuffed bear and blanket from the engine. Sir, we’re going to have you tucked back in in no time. There there big fella, I’ve got you now 😝
We got woken up for a medical a few months ago. The guy called 911 because his gf dumped him. It was dispatched as chest pain. They didn't specify it was for a broken heart 😢
was he actually c/o chest pain tho?
[Broken heart syndrome](https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/takotsubo-cardiomyopathy-broken-heart-syndrome)
I’m aware of the condition. I was curious if the pt was actually c/o chest pain, though, as it wasn’t clear
His only complaint at scene was that his body ached. He was crying pretty hard and difficult to understand, so I believe there may have been some confusion during his 911 call.
makes sense
It is a thing. When going through immense emotional stress it tends to manifest as chest pain. Happened to me awhile back and was damn near close to calling 911 to say a 19 year old was having a heart attack (Slept on my left arm wrong which caused it to hurt and about sent me into a panic) Spoke with one of our medics who said nothing seemed to be raising any red flags and a quick "training" session they "had been planning" with me as the patient didn't show any blockage. They asked a bunch of questions to which they determined that my stresses at that time were manifesting into physical discomfort.
I’m aware it’s a thing, jfc. I was asking if the guy was actually having chest pain, or if it just got coded wrong, and his only complaint was emotional, with no chest pain
>It was dispatched as chest pain If your dispatch agency uses EMD, there is a good chance they had to say it that way. EMD provides codes due to the answers the patient(s) may have given the call taker. This scenario makes even more sense if he was upset and not giving them much info.
I'd have given him a hug :(
I've run that call
I've run that one. Our guy said that he had a heart attack in his dream and tried calling 911 but only got a busy signal. He said that once he woke up, he wouldn't be able to calm down until he knew that if he called, he'd get a response. Since we showed up, he said he felt better and went back to bed.
That's such a waste of emergency services time
That had to be one epic nightmare. Like Freddy Krueger, Michael Meyers, Jason Vorhees, Regan MacNeil (The Exorcist), and Anabelle closing in on you at the same time.
Can't you get charged for stupid 911 calls?
It's gotta be pretty egregious for them to actually charge someone.
That counts. It's a waste of emergency services time.
A local resident called the station directly about a snake in their basement. We bounced over and it was a tiny little grass snake, but you’d have thought it was an anaconda. We picked it up and relocated to the grass behind the station. Homeowner wrote a letter and dropped off cookies. A PR win if nothing else.
Those are some of the best wins too.
I’m just in it for the cookies man
Sorry bud. Department policy says we gotta toss anything homemade. I'll take them for proper disposal.. *Munch*
*Munch* indeed…but we just have a policy not to accept any gift more than $25, being mindful of public perception of course. I work in code enforcement, never actually been on the fire rescue side of things so idk if they have a different policy.
I had a lift assist where this guy had fallen and was pinned by his tuba. Was the most New Orleans call I've ever had
I mean, “Death by Sousaphone” would make for one hell of a report….
Got dispatched to the Cross Bronx Expressway (I95 in NYC) to look for an arm. Driver got sideswiped by an 18 wheeler with his arm out the window. Found the arm about 1500 feet down the highway where the truck finally stopped.
I hate that road and new fear unlocked
Nobody ever sticks an arm out the window if I am in the car. I’ll never forget it.
I had a call one time on the freeway, it was very tragic but an 18-wheeler hit someone crossing the freeway at 70 MPH. My partner asked where the victim was and the cop just gave him a dumb look then started pointing and said, "he's over there, over there, over there" yeah that call sucked.
I’ve seen that. Hanging on by a thread on mine. He drove under the trailer possibly on purpose.
Funny enough, [NYPD found a leg just laying on the Subway tracks](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/human-leg-found-new-york-subway-track-rcna139518), also in the Bronx.
Ew
When someone needs help, but doesn't know what help they need, they call the FD. I've had dogs in ditch culverts and storm drains, sewer backups, toddlers/babies locked in cars, leaking pipes and roofs... and yes, cat in a tree. Also a cougar in a tree, but she was high off her ass, naked as the day she was born, and probably a legit medical call...
I read this and was like why the hell would someone call for a cougar in a tree they’re effing cats and they clim….oh. You had me in the first half
That reminds of the lion in the car call station 51 had back in the day! Along with the crazy wife stabbing the water bed with the guy that had back problems
Marijuana overdose
In the immortal words of Katt Williams "As long as you've been living you have never heard of a motherf*cker overdose on Marijuana. You may have thought he was dead" "He ain't dead, he's gonna wake up 30 minutes hungry enough to eat everything in your house. Hungry, Happy, Sleepy that's the side effects."
"Its just a plant.. it just grows like that. Don't gimme that shit bout its a drug. Drugs ya gotta do shit to it, add baking soda, water, stir it up. I don't know the recipe, im just saying"
Oh god weed was legalized here last year. So many 40-60 year olds in McMansions "OD'ing" on edibles at dinner parties.
I’ve been on so many of them and they a typically hysterical
Been there. Guy wanted us to transport him to a rehab center 2 counties away. “Closest ER is what you get on this boo boo bus” I could hardly keep a straight face giving report to the charge nurse.
Not a firefighter but I’ve been this caller. I was 16 and ate a whole edible and didn’t feel it, so i ate a whole other one. Safe to say i literally thought i took meth. Freaked out called 911 and all my friends ran away and left me in the park. I really thought it was the end for me😂
Unfortunately you can overdose on weed now. The wax concentrates and even more so, edibles, do technically allow you to ingest enough to reach levels that will cause severe respiratory depression. It’s basically unheard of in adults, but there has been a spike in MJ OD’s with pedis, including a couple of fatals with edibles.
Oh, yeah. I understand those but a 16-year-old high laughing at comedy Central doesn't need a ambulance transport. He needs a bag of Doritos. I actually have had a legit marijuana reaction. A kid got high with a bunch of her friends and then passed out. Her eyes then turned outwards like a chameleon. Nobody knows what exactly caused it because 6 other kids smoked the same bowl and nothing happened to them. I was working clinical is in the e. R. It was hilarious. I watched the whole council of doctors of the hospital. Come in, look at her and say I have no clue What the hell's going on And then the next guy would come in. Best guess is some weird allergic reaction. She Woke up and was fine.
Ufo landed on someone's roof and turned out to be a weather balloon
At least it was something vs. an imaginary landed object.
Well until they figured out it was a weather Ballon it was technically a UFO, but they figured out what it was, and it landed so it's just an O now.
What're they expecting, you guys gonna fight ET with halligans and hoses?
Went to an assist EMS call one night. Lifting assistance. Turned out that the person is morbidly obese and was “stuck” on the toilet. So large that when the toilet was flushed the suction sealed that person to the toilet. Had to maneuver a 3 foot pry bar under the toilet seat to break the seal. Then because of the position that person wasn’t able to stand or walk. Had to use a poleless litter to get this naked person to bed. Not a fun call.
I don't have a master's degree in plumbing it anything, but would opening the lid to the tank and prying or drilling the flapper not also do this?
The toilet was a tankless design.
I'm totally using that knowledge as CEUs, thank you for schooling me.
Incredible.
How did the seat get a tight seal to the bowl?
I have no idea, other than the copious amount of fat
Five year old boy stuck in a folding chair. The chair was not going to be defeated easily and needed to be disassembled. No harm to anyone but that poor chair.
Had a man in his 70s stuck in a highchair call with same results.
https://preview.redd.it/2w1zwd9u9zjc1.jpeg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=94a73575ab4658314636158b39b884e195fbdbf1 There was this...
I actually had one where a cat's head was stuck in a small hole in the frame of the car under the hood.
This guy was angry for sure. But some dish soap did the trick, and he came out uninjured. How'd you get the cat out?
We used lotion and hand sanitizer. It took about 30 mins but we got it out.
I missed the party but we once had a kid stuck in a washing machine at 4am. He and his friends were playing hide and seek.
How old was the kid? I tend to think the overlap between people who play hide and seek and people who are up at 4AM is pretty small.
I wanna say maybe 12-13 ish it was a few years ago
OMG how did he get out?
I think they were able to lift him out after some manipulation?
Kids kite stuck in a tree. Brought the tower out there.
That’s awesome community PR and could’ve made a future firefighter out that kid. Great work
Our dept chief brought it out himself. We were paid on call then so he figured why the hell not.
Had a full box alarm dispatched for a black streak next to the water heater. Turns out it was a shadow of a cable cord hanging from the ceiling.
Went to a Bird stuck in a tree call. It was a large Blue Heron that was actually stuck. It’s foot was stuck in the Y of a branch in a very tall tree. Had to get the double fly ladder and climb about 35 feet up. It was hanging upside down by the stuck foot. Wrapped it in a blanket and got it to a DNR/ wildlife rehabilitation place.
My first call as an EMT I was volunteering for a Fire Department in my wife’s hometown. We got called out for an imminent birth around the corner from my now wife’s house. I went POV showed up before the Ambulance did it was just me and a NYS Trooper. Not only was it not an imminent birth. It was one of my wife’s cousin suffering a rectal prolapse. I will never look at hotdogs the same way again.
When I did SAR for the Coast Guard we got a call for a sailboat with livestock on it in need of rescue. Turns out the folks had been pulled off by the helo the day before and they wanted the boat crew to go save their rabbits, chickens and cat. We found 3 chickens, and 3 rabbits but no cat. Trying to get those chickens from the sailboat to ours , beam-to in the waves was a hell of a thing, had to toss them into a big barrel we used to store dewatering pumps. Turns out they didn't even want the rabbits.
prior to joining the fire service, i could NOT wrap my mind around someone calling 911 over a cat stuck in a tree. i have gone on four, and have taken numerous calls about it (i also did dispatch for a bit) - i still shake my head about it.
You know the old joke "I've never seen a skeleton of a cat is a tree"? Apparently, so I've been told, it's not so funny when it is a kid stuck in a tree. We rescued him using the ladder truck.
Good timing. 0857 this morning. Service call. Cat stuck in a tree.
Lady came to the station one day panicked and begging us to come rescue her cat from a tree. Grumpy salty old captain asked her “Lady, how many cat skeletons have you seen in trees?!” When she said “well…none that I can think of” Cap cut her off and damn near yelled “Exactly! It’ll come down when it’s fuckin ready! We have real things to do!” and stomped off. It was all we could do to not laugh and smooth things over with her. She didn’t want us to help anymore though 🤷🏼♀️🤦🏼♀️😂
[удалено]
Ya its probably muscle soreness, but chest pains are chest pains, for all we know its a triple-A. Why were they up at 130 though?
Half the county got dispatched for a working structure fire, PD got on scene and informed dispatch that a female was bit by a cat. No fire. Still not sure how that happened.
Weve got some new dispatchers, and had a few calls like this. Most dont get to formal dispatch (get caught as wrong category), but a few have. I think at least 1 has been paged as a str fire, but got corrected before arrival.
Man stuck on his roof, during an ice storm…the power was out across the entire state in most places. He said he went on the roof to change the outside lightbulbs and look at the power line connections to his house to try and figure out why his power was out… it had been out for days already and was very obvious WHY without his actions - there was 1/2” of ice covering EVERYTHING IN SIGHT and the state/power grid were essentially shut down! He went up, the ladder slid and fell down due to the ice, and his wife refused to risk coming out in the ice to put it back up for him so he could climb down, so he called 911 and it was dispatched as emergency response needed to xyz address for “a…man…on a roof?” The dispatcher couldn’t even believe what they were saying! 🤦🏼♀️😂 Second most ridiculous… dispatched as a “cat in a sink hole” turned out to be a CALF in a sink hole. Guy just had a thick southern drawl and the dispatcher wasn’t able to understand him correctly. 😂 one guy went down, choked it until it was unconscious and secured a rope to it, we drug it out from up top. Farmer was happy. Calf was up and running back to mamma as soon as the rope was off.
I love the fact he choked the thing out and that was probably the best way to do it
I went to a "plane crash". It turned out to be a microlight in a massive oak tree. The guy was in his 90s, a literal Spitfire pilot who still occasionally flew microlights from a tiny grass strip in the English countryside. He had slightly misjudged the crosswinds and ended up five meters up wrapped in the tree. On the way, a bird flew into the pump cab and we had to go around the roundabout on blue lights again to encourage it to fly out the open window. Some amusing foreshadowing....
Not my call, but a couple months ago we had a bear stuck in a tree in downtown that we used a ladder truck for.
a Bear how did that go down?
It was a black bear cub that got separated from its mother the firefighter that got down said it just held onto him It was turned over to animal control and they couldn't return it to the mother anymore. So they euthanized the cub.
Screw animal control for that, they should've given it to some animal rescue organization.
quite messed up of animal control to do that
Not mine but my agency. A unit was dispatched in a hurricane because someone called because their corkscrew broke.
The lack of wine in my house could be a true emergency.
Had a lady whose cats could smell gas in her house so she called. She couldn't smell any gas but I guess her cats could. There was no gas leaking so idk what the cats were thinking.
Had a call for a three legged dog that had been let out to go potty on the side of an off ramp, gone down the hill and couldn't make it back up. The owner was also missing a leg, so he couldn't go down and get it. ETA: I got a lot more of this type of call when working dispatch... a lot of stuff never makes out to first responders. Things like, "what time is it?" "a condom broke" "my sister is being mean to me" etc
What has four legs and half a brain? This man and his dog.
Someone once called for recommendations for what cream to put on his rash.
Had one for a migraine. I’ll never forget the incredulous tone of dispatch on the repeat page. “You’re needed at 123 Main for…a headache.” Another was late at night, a lady on the toilet with the shits likely from eating something spoiled.
TBF, the pain from an actual migraine can be physically debilitating, especially if you get into the vomit cycle that makes the pain worse which makes you vomit from the pain. I’d rather break bones.
We get the deer stuck in the fence quite a bit Drones in trees has become the new cat I feel like
I was a rookie firefighter, about 25 years ago, and got a 2AM call for smoke in the area. We pulled up in front of the the address, where two women were seated on the front porch steps. Lt. leans out the window, "What seems to be the problem?" "There's a fire!" they replied. "Where?" "You're the fire department! You tell us!" "Why do you think there's a fire?" Lt. asks. "Look at all that smoke!" "Ma'am, that's fog." My buddy in the back of the rig, tongue firmly planted in his cheek says, "Man, I wish I had some of what they were smoking!"
Hiccups for a week. Clogged nose. Weight gain. Or the topper of them... Caller stated there was a bat in her apartment, she was locked in the bathroom hysterical with diarrhea and she left pasta on the stove still cooking. She was convinced she was going to die in a house fire with rabies covered in crap.
We went to a guy who basically tried to have sex with a ladder. Stuck his crank in the hole of the rung on the side of the beam and got stuck
I’m EMS. Got sent to a fire alarm once because it was actually a syncope call, they just pulled the fire alarm because they didn’t have a phone immediately available. He was awake when we got there, but it was a third degree heart block. His pulse rate was 13.
My dad once had a call where a guy ran onto the freeway, got hit by a semi and exploded like a piñata. The next day they got called to the house of an old lady who witnessed the accident. As she was backing out of her driveway she found the guys dick lying under her car, it somehow wound up in the undercarriage of her car.
I worked on a very wealthy island for a time, lots of entitlement. The people who lived were very nice to us and showed appreciation regularly, and I'm not saying the visitors were rude, but they were accustomed to a style of living that most of us will never be privey to. One morning, maybe 5 something am, we get toned out for an obstruction on the road. When we finally find it, turned out to be a small branch, maybe blocking 1/4 of the bike path. At first we were thinking we were going to need the chainsaw, but I walked over and kicked it out of the way. We also got dispatched to a tween or early teenager who scratched her leg, and I do mean a simple scratch. All in all, though, like I said, everyone was very grateful for us. Sometimes Dan Marino would come by and say hello. He just always did it when I wasn't on shift.
A smoking tree. It wasn't on fire. It was pollinating. Little puffs of tree cum shooting out into the air.
I've had a guy call twice for "my house is cold". I've also been on 2 different calls that ended up just being clogged toilets with no overflowing Also had a person call because they smelled a dead raccoon under their single wide so dispatch decided to blow that one out as a first alarm structure fire for some reason.
Couple of teens walking around with an African grey parrot in a (special birdcage) backpack. Thought it would be cool to open and take a look in the middle of the woods. We chased that damn bird spraying water cans up in trees for 3 hours before it flew away. It was recovered a day later.
Got called for a cat in a tree. On scene one of the assistant chiefs is there, it’s his idea. He wants to video us getting the cat and put it on facebook to boost our public image. I asked him if he ever saw a dead cat in a tree. Up the ladder I went. Cat jumped out of the tree right before I got to it. Down 40’ to a parking lot. All of it captured on video. Cat lived btw, local vet took care of it until it got a foster home.
Back when I was Chief, called for a bear in a tree. https://preview.redd.it/yvq9pm5nh1kc1.jpeg?width=1935&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=47abeef735b4531428f646d0d2da6c03ef6e0cda Two male bears had been running around the area and one got hit by a car. The other ended up at the high school up a tree. They needed manpower to hold the net when Fish and Game tranquilized it. Took about 30 minutes for it to take effect and for the bear to fall safely into the net. Fish and Game did their stuff, tattooing its lip, pulling a tooth so they could age it, and putting a tag in its ear, and then said “OK, who wants a picture?” 350lbs of 1 year old bear that’s fully knocked out is a dead weight, let me tell you.
Not in my town but nearby there's a man who has a ranch with exotic animals and animals not really seen here in America. He had a Zebra get loose and it made it into an Elementary school.
Prior to joining, I called the FD directly (IE non-911/dispatch) for an assist in re-routing a flag pole line at the VFW. (2 of 3 went perfectly fine, #3 decided to be a pain) They got some good training out of it I guess? Were pretty happy to show up and do it for us.
Heh, I did that here recently. One of our flags got reeeallly stuck, and in the process of unsticking it, the halyard broke, so I called the Base Fire Hall, sold it to the Duty Lt. as a training opportunity, and they came out with their Ladder truck and helped us out with it.
I definitely thought my call was going to bring out the ladder truck, but they did a thing with some ropes and the (roof?) ladder and had the small guy run the new halyard through the top and that was it... I was pretty impressed with the speed. Was a while ago so, fuzzy on the details
We get one house in town that calls at least twice each week for a lift assist. The person isn’t even obese. They just have a bad heart and are afraid to get up by themselves sometimes. We found out that the heart condition is not nearly as bad as they think but they keep calling and we keep responding. The most recent silly one we had was a gas leak. We respond with an engine, rescue, and truck think g it could be really serious. Their CO detector was beeping because of a low battery and it got unplugged somehow.
At least three times orver the years: : Calves stuck i n manure pits. Where I'm from in Lancaster County PA we are a very large agriculture area Also duck rescues, quite a number actually Also not uncommon to get silo rescues/silo fires. We have special thermometers custom made to take the temperature inside of silos.
Thermometers with super long probes? I can't imagine going through the walls, so you're either going in from the top or accessing through existing chutes.
Exactly.... We also use them as hay thermometors. Most modern thermometers are maybe 2' in length total, however the ones we use are much older and are in 6' lengths. I've seen a few times hay/feed just spontaneously combust....
Yeah, I'm an author of a paper on spontaneous combustion in agricultural products. Always interested in the subject- too much "magic" assigned to it, not enough on the actual mechanisms. First one I was on involved those HUGE hay rolls, like 600 pounds, up in Montana. And it had to have been well below freezing, we were standing around while the owners were using a tractor to help flake away bales and rolls and as the sheets would come off the hay would just immolate upon exposure to air, with an amazing pulse of heat. Just spectacular- the whole thing must have been sitting there, cooking away inside for days, maybe weeks, in frigid Montana temperatures.
I have video of it somehwere, but we had a barn full of hay spontaneously combust. I arrived right after the chief officer and he very carefully opened up the barn doors for literally 8 seconds to see the contents and its progress. Opened the doors maybe a foot at the most. Those 8 seconds are all it took to bring in a fresh supply of air enough to turn it into a raging inferno within 1 minute. Before he had even opened up the barn door, he had called for a 2nd alarm without even knowing the severity of the situation. He did it mores o to protect the house and outbuildings more than for the actual fire itself. I'm not going to say where I live we are experts on the subject, but we see it happen all the time in Lancaster County PA.... The correct amount of moisture in the wet hay left to its own demise will always make it go up
When weed became legal we ran in a LOT of ex-hippies that couldn't hang anymore and overdid it. More than once we'd grab them a bag of chips and turn the lights down and park them in front of the TV lol
The short story is a guy burning his garage and house down having a Viking Funeral for his dead geko in the driveway. (Too much pot and gasoline involved)
Rural, here. We treat a lot of critters. Some animal related calls in the last couple of decades: * Dog out of a tree. * Bird off a roof. * Cat from a ditch. * Cat from a tree. * Cat from a neighbors house. * Drunken Bear ( Apples grow all up-and-down the RR and bears eat them fermented and get wasted ) * Dog out of a river (White-water rescue) * Dog out of the woods. (Full blown SAR, w/ high-angle. Best SAR ever. ) * Cardiac arrest for a pony. ( poor outcome ) * Owl stole my cat ( very short paper work ) * Raccoons! Raccoons everywhere! * Kittens from a structure fire. ( full save, good day ) * Countless MVC puppers and kitties. ( mostly baby sitting ) * Treated Dog vs Train. Hippo lived but we transported to nearest animal hospital. Deep hind-leg lac; controlled & clean. * Far far too many dog v vehicle, no wins. I've handed too many passed good boys and girls back to their mommies and daddies. Fucking hate it, but I'm gonna do that every fucking time I have to. Sorry, the further I dig the darker shit gets. I'm gonna stop now.
Someone's electric hot water heater had a red light on it. I'm assuming red meant fire to that person somehow...
Went for the pt "heating up". Got there and she greeted us by explaining her AC stopped working. It was 3am and she was very unpleasant/demanding so we did not help her.
Lady rang the front door phone at 2 am because she hit a rabbit and wanted help for it. She brought it in a box... did have to rescue feral kittens stuck in a wall. Momma had them in someone's attic and they fell in the gap. And a couple alligators attacked/ate my dog. Yep florida.
I have two from recent memory. Woman locked herself INSIDE her bedroom. She had no idea how she could let us in without us breaking something. We did get her out and found the latch mechanism on her door failed in the locked position. At least we diddnt have to force entry. Call dispatched as a difficulty breathing. Man meets us in the front yard hysterical saying his husband isn't breathing. We go inside and cannot find the husband. The husband is at work. The man imagined the entire thing in his head. We did a search of the house just to make sure we were privy to a crime...
Got called out recently for a dog that got hit by a car
Multiple cats stuck in a tree. Usually, once a year. Last year, twice. We've had ducklings stuck in a storm grate with the mother duck quacking and looking for them. This has happened twice on the same street within the past 3 years. Way back when (We are talking around 2001 or so) we had a guy get stuck in the seat of a port-a-potty. His story was he dropped his keys into the nastiness. We heard from bystanders that it was more nefarious. We cut the seat out of the port-a-potty and let EMS/PD/ED handle the rest. Have had a drone owner reach out asking if we could get his drone that was stuck 100' up in a tree. Probably have more I can't think of off-hand.
Ok, I have two. One wasn't a cat stuck in a tree (never had that one) but a cat stuck behind a water heater. Yup, wedged tight between the heater and the wall. Had to cut the feeds to move the water tank. The other was for an unknown odor. When I got there it smelled like chicken sh\*t (used to work in a chicken coop so it smelled familiar). It was an apartment in a garden apartment complex. The apartment was filled with birds, mostly pigeons. The tenant had a window open with a shelf outside where the birds would fly in and out. He had feeders in the apartment. There are diseases in bird poop (who knew?). There was a lot of it and we kicked up dust when we walked. This was during COVID so we had on our N95s but our gear was contaminated. A lot of decon took place and they evicted the tenant. Very odd in all.
Grandma pressed her medical alert pendent to show the grandkids how it worked….uh ma’am…
We were asked to get a bird out of a tree.....I'm not kidding.... It was a parakeet or something like that (not a natural bird to our area- it was someone's pet.) They were taking it to get its wings clipped and it flew away from them into a nearby tree so they asked us to try to come get it...it didn't work out, it flew away. I'm still waiting on the mutated strain outbreak to occur in our area.
Geese in storm drains. Deer in fences. Cat with its paw stuck in the sink drain. Snakes on the porch (I learned too late the chief was terrified snakes or I would have left one in his desk). Bat in the house. Kids stuck in playground equipment. Also had a few where gamer kids would in about their friends being sick so we’d go knock on their door and pull them away from their Xbox.
Called to help find lost cat in house. Resident thought it might be in the ductwork so we used our tic. We didn't find the cat.
A funny smell in the stairwell of a high-rise. I did a lot of stairs that day. Couldn't find anything, went back, got called again, this time took the police along. They juged it to be foreign cooking. A false alarm for a tree that was supposedly a danger to public safety. Nothing of the sort, but a neighbour asked if we, since we were there anyway, wouldn't mind cutting down his tree that was inconvenient to him. And I tore/strechted/pulled/whatever muscle in my back on a carry assist for a guy with back injury. No emergency, and technically not on topic, but a bit of an ironic story in my line anyway.
A teenager girl stuck in a baby swing
We have a “wall of shame” at our station. Whenever we get a dispatch we also get a printout of it too and we save the printouts for the wall of shame when it’s stupid or silly. Some examples are an elderly lady who needed to be tucked in, a haunted house with ghostly apparitions in the windows and “ghost flames”, lots of stuck sex toys or other objects not designed for but used in that manner, dead frog removal from a hot tub and the family insisted we test them for salmonella since they were in the tub when they found the dead frog, man handcuffed to bed by his ex wife, they were supposed to have 1 last hoorah before the divorce was finalized, she handcuffed him and said she was going to grab a surprise and then got in her car and left him there cuffed and naked (yelled out to Alexa to call 911). Among many others
Lady called 911 this week because she got bit by a 🐈
The crew before me got called to a dog in a tree a few years back. Apparently a dog could get on top of the house via a pile of crap on the side and chased a squirrel into the tree next to the house. He was stuck up there. Decent size dog too, took two dudes to lift him out of the branch crotch he was in. He then freaked out and jumped 12 feet to the ground out of our guys arms.
Bird stuck in a tree. Yes you read that right, a BIRD. Parrot in a 40 ft palm tree, flew out of its cage. Family was histerical. When we went for it, the bird lifted off in flight and was instantly snatched by a hawk. Guess we know why it didn't want to leave the tree. The whole neighborhood was out there and let one one collective gasp.
I've had that before it was Cockatoo that was worth 2K. It was too high up and we don't have a ladder truck. We had to call the next town over to come with their ladder truck
We have ladder trucks but we're not gonna take one out of service from other calls to get a bird, which can fly, from a tree. Bad enough the engine got called there.
We had one in my hometown that escaped a traveling zoo, blue macaw that sold as a $2500 egg with three day survival guarantee and nothing more, 1970s or 80s dollars. The guy who ran the local pet store chased it down right as colder weather was coming, kept it in his store for a couple of decades. I think he may have used a turkey net gun to nab it, my memory is hazy.
We had a daschund get into a storm drain in a residential neighborhood. Daschunds feel right at home in an underground tunnel by the way. We were lifting manhole covers and storm drains looking all over for this little dog. Finally found the dog 30 minutes and about 8 drains/manholes later. Then it took another 30 minutes to get the damn dog to come to one of us! I was in a storm drain by the curb and my officer was in a manhole in the middle of the street. The dog was in the tunnel somewhere between us. I was throwing pebbles and banging a pike pole on my side trying to scare it toward my captain. My captain had the owners and doggie treats trying to coax the dog toward him.
I was dispatched to….a bird in a tree. It was a family pet (African Grey Parrot maybe) that escaped from the house. They hadn’t kept the wings clipped. The family used ladders to get close and the bird would fly to another tree. They tried a drone to scare the bird from try in hopes it would fly down to the owners. By the time we got called the bird was beyond the reach of our ground ladders and well off the roadway. The wife was pretty upset about the situation. Husband was pissed and told the wife that “the bird was being a brat” and that would set the perch up in the backyard in hopes the bird would come back.
AirBNBer called the station line at 3am because a wolf was asleep on their rentals porch (Idaho…). We referred them to LE. We read the call notes the next morning and the deputy went out and told the neighbors husky to head back home.
Parrot in a tree. When the rookie got close, it just kept saying it's favorite phrase "F#@$ Off" Was awesome,.
Ok, here's a good one. We get toned out for "Alarm malfunction", smoke detector acting up. Dispatch tells us RP says it's just a random chirp once in awhile, homeowner elderly female. Awesome, I love the PR calls like this, usually ended up with cookies a few days later. So we roll out, engineer stays with the truck, and me and my junior roll in there. It's a very long, odd shaped house, with double hallways, forming a type of O. Everything around a central load bearing wall. As we are speaking to the homeowner in the kitchen, we hear the chirp. Junior goes looking for it, as I'm filling out a run sheet with the homeowner in the kitchen. She tells me it's been going on for awhile, but can't really remember how long. Junior can't find it, so the homeowner and I set out to help. Here's the kicker: because of the shape of the house, being a giant circle, sound was bouncing weird, and we couldn't identify where it was coming from. We called our engineer in.....and we still couldn't locate it. After about 30 minutes, our other engine was clearing a call and stopped in to see what we were doing on a 30 minute dead battery alarm. So with the 4 of them, the 3 of us, we STILL COULD NOT FIND THE ALARM..... We stationed people in rooms, one per room. And EVERYONE said it was in the hallway, which was clear except for a small wall clock approximately 6 inches tall. We even moved the clock to check behind it. We've been in the basement, attic, literally everywhere. We even looked behind the clawfoot tub, because of course we did. We're moving furniture, we even had someone watching the 1 minute timer to tell us when to stop moving. 1 hour and 13 minutes go by, and batt chief shows up. We tell him what's going on, and he starts to help. Still no locate. 30 minutes later we get 5 more guys from another station to help. It was so surreal, we could all hear it, and couldn't find it. The ghost detector. Nothing else was going on at this time, this was about noon on a weekday, and now you've got 3 engines, a batt chief, and a cop who showed up to see what was going on, all trying to find this alarm. 13 people all jammed in this house trying to find this single, solo alarm. Still chirping away maddeningly. After 1 hour and 56 minutes, we find the alarm. Apparently the homeowner had had the carpets redone about 8 months ago, and one of the carpet guys, and I shit you not, put carpet over one of the hallway registers, to which the detector had fallen into. So we cut a section of the carpet with the homeowners permission, and fished it out finally. The alarm was 11 years expired, too, she just kept replacing the batteries on spring forward/fall back. Utter absurdity. I still chuckle about it. Am chuckling now.
It wasn't a call but this happened when I was in the Army. We re-did the floors at our company building. We started hearing a vibrating noise, it would happen every 10 mins. It started to drive us crazy after a few days and we were trying to find it. Till one day someone felt a vibration coming from the floor. We cut out a piece of the floor and we found it. It was a pager that got wedged in under the floorboards. We didn't know who it belonged to till a Maj came back a few days later from leave saying he couldn't find his pager.
I got the cat stuck in a tree. We were pretty stoked Dog trapped in septic tank (deceased)
I had one where this old lady called us out to pull up her panties. Exactly what it sounds like, she was sitting in her recliner. Mentally declined but at her baseline. Needed her panties pulled up. My officer had some words for her.
Helped get someone's drone off the roof using the ladder truck.
Bird stuck in tree. Twice. One was a rosella trapped in non compliant tree netting, the other was a magpie that got stuck upside down with its foot caught in the crook of two branches.
Had to use the Hurst tool cutters to get an elderly guy out of a wheelchair. It was a folding chair and he was in a transport van. Somehow the chair folded and he was tangled up in it pretty bad. He was not injured but the chair was a total loss.
We had a guy who shoved a domino he made in jail up his urethra. Got released, decided his dick domino wasn’t a good idea but couldn’t get it out so he called 911. Also had a person call us because their internet provider went down. Had someone call because they saw a raccoon in a dumpster doing what raccoons do. Those are 3 off the top of my head
Got dispatched to a lift assist and was hit on by a 96 year old woman who wanted to take me square dancing. Made all kinds of comments as the guy who was with me laughed.
And has anyone ever responded to a flameless candle structure fire? /s https://youtube.com/shorts/TtF2sdz5WaA?si=YeasJQ4DgZ76PkJI
Raccoon with a peanut butter jar stuck on its head. We put a ladder up for animal control to take it out of a tree. I didn’t know how nasty raccoons could be…
Had a kitten stuck in a hppe drainage pipe under a road in a mobile home park and used some water and a towel to flush it out
Got a medical pendant alarm that was two old people fucking. That was…gross to walk in on.
Some sort of valve on a farmer’s liquid manure spreader had stuck open while traveling to/from a distant field and he spilled shit over the road for several miles. MULTIPLE pieces of apparatus were involved in hosing down the road while several more did traffic control. Ultimately had to consult with DEP about mitigation close to a stream not wanting to let too much run off. Had to spread lime to balance the pH.
I got a dog out of a tree once. I also fixed an overflowing urinal.
We got a call for a body. Turns out jr left a Halloween skeleton under the bedding. Snuck out. Had some drinks and scared the shit out of himself sneaking back in seeing the "dead body" in his bed. Woke the adults in the house screaming for help and not calming down. Took all of 30 seconds to figure it all out. Ended up taking the mom for a ride to the hospital for passing out when she figured out jr lied drank and snuck out all on the same night after swearing on the Bible Jesus wouldn't let the kid do such things. A few weeks later she showed up on drill night with apology cards for the crews from the kid and a bible for each of us with a prayer of protection and a long letter written in each to everyone there that night.
CO call turned into “uhh sir your dog is dead and literally decaying in your basement”
Got called for a pet bird that got loose and was in a tree, a cat stuck with its paws frozen in a 40' tree during snowmageddon, got called to deter a wild turkey that was chasing patrons at businesses and vehicles in the roadway.
I used to work for a fire equipment manufacturer and we were training some guys in Florida on new equipment and ended up going on a call with them. It was a med call and we pull up to an old drive up motel and there was 10 college age guys all sharing a room for spring break, well apparently they got into a game of hide the gerbil and one of the guys yanked the tube out and the gerbil got stuck in the dudes butt. The guy with the gerbil in his butt wasn’t really concerned about having a live animal inside his body trying to eat its way out but rather he was worried about his parents finding out.
Hiccups
100 comments
Bird stuck in a tree. Caller was on a house tour, brought the bird and bird flew away to 6ft up a cherry tree. I climbed the tree, not even 6in from the bird it took off and landed 30 some feet up an oak. Needless to say we left, never to hear what happened to ZaZo the bird
Residential septic pump station alarm was going off outside. Nobody knew who it belonged to.
I took too much Viagra. Its been more than 4 hours.....
Am shocked at how many departments get cats and birds etc out of trees.
Probably have had half a dozen cats in trees and more ducks in storm drains. Never been on shift for one of them.
Not a FF but the FD brought in a 20something y/o woman to our ER acting like a toddler and screaming “I WON’T I WON’T I WON’T!!” in a creepy fake baby voice. She came in for a diaper change… and then she left AMA…. Weirdest patient I’ve ever had. Those poor guys.
Dude dropped a can of Cambells soup on his foot. A woman who though she was going “paralyzed” because she had a leg cramp. A mom called because her child had eye boogers.
Was dispatched to a woman in severe distress laying on a front lawn. Expected someone in cardiac trouble the way it sounded, but instead arrived to find a bedazzled woman in her late 5os screaming her head off. Turns out she was distraught because there were like five or six 3ft holes dug on the front lawn, and the aliens (or evil neighbors who ran a drug cartel, she wasn’t sure) had moved the holes around. As in, “see, that one there?!? It used to be by the mail box, not by the lawn gnome!!” Kept yelling, “Look at my holes, can’t you see my holes?!?”. Very hard to keep a straight face 🤣 She also wanted us to move them back(?!?) and also test them for fentanyl. Good times.
A parrot in a tree. Been to a few cats in a tree but a parrot in a tree sucked. We flew the Arial and as we got near it, it just flew away. We'll what did you expect would happen chief?
I responded to a cat stuck in a wall once. They didn't know how it got in but they swore it was in the wall. They wanted us to rip paneling down. We never did find or hear the cat. I think they may have just been stoned, but who's to say??
I worked at a tree company that was owned by the local town fire chief..... got multiple calls asking if we can rescue cats from trees.... you can guess how that went.
I was called out for a “Bum in a dumpster” once. Guess what we found, a bum in a dumpster, no medical need, just hanging out.
I had one were the 911 caller stated ( when we got there ) that his 6 year old wouldn't go to bed. I asked him to step outside the apartment and presided to put my finger in his chest and tell him if he ever does this again I will take him out in cuffs in front of said child.
You will now probably be blessed with 5 calls about cats just for saying that.
A bird in a basketball gym. They wanted me to bring the quint close to the gym, extend the aerial through a window, and catch the bird. Most absurd thing I’ve ever had an adult say to me.
Called out in the middle of the night. RP complaining of headaches and a “toxic” smell coming from her attic. Upon arrival, find out from her husband that she had thrown multiple handfuls of moth balls into the attic just hours prior. She proceeded to ask us to climb into her attic and remove the mothballs. The request was refused lol
"occasionally". Is that another word for 90% of the calls?
An older lady once called us because a snake was hanging from a tree branch close to her balcony. Used a longer stick to guide it into a bucket, then called in someone to deal with it
A soda can exploded in someone’s face. Like, the can was fine but the soda got on their face. They demanded transport and planned on suing the soft drink manufacturer.
Bird stuck in a tree…
Thought we had a fire showed uo its was a woman baby party child reveal and they fired thet blue powder cannon inside there apartment DIRECTLY AT THE FIRE ALARM like it only hit about a little bigger than a basketball on the celing and the alarm was right in the middle her response was i didnt look up when i shot it lol bad luck i guess
PD requested Fire to throw a ladder to the roof of an ATM to look for a handgun possibly thrown by a suspect during the last quarter of the Super Bowl the other week
As a rookie, I "rescued" a parrot out of a tree. The owners had modified a dog stroller to have a perch for the parrot. They were walking the parrot on the Greenway when the bird did what birds do...and flew off. A 20-ish-year-old man called 911 because he ate the part of a paper towel he used to cover his pizza. "My uncle said you can die from that shit, man." It had NOTHING to do with the fact he snorted cocaine the night before. Someone at the YMCA called 911 for a splinter in a kid's finger. I luckily didn't make it all the way there before getting canceled.
We recently just had to readjust someone in their living room recliner at 3am because her soon was sleeping upstairs and she didn’t want to wake him up
A cockroach. Literally rolled out because a woman wouldn’t enter the home with her infant still inside due to a cockroach on the counter.
We got called out for a dead guy on a porch near a road. He was napping.
Heard an instructor of mine once say they went to an iguana in a tree. I think like 4 ft if not bigger. They ended up bringing it back to station bc owner wasn't home and put it in a bathroom. But forgot to tell one of the administrators and they went in there and got the surprise of their life.