If I say, “Strange things happen when you work in the fire service,” no one is likely to have a ‘light bulb clicking on over the head’ moment. It is stating the obvious.
You see head-scratching oddities on the calls you run and when you scan firefighting news. Yet, despite living in a world where the abnormal is normal, this week brought several news stories that despite having underlying relevance, are still fairly ridiculous.
And so in no particular order are this week’s stories that need to be laughed at.
1. Just use a rope
I know this is very serious to those Florida firefighters battling for approval to build a training facility, but the comments by one commissioner were simply bonkers. Grousing on about how they are not a city like Chicago with huge buildings, this official said firefighters could use a rope to reach the top of their four-story buildings.
My mind immediately snapped to the 1960s-era Batman television show. I’m guessing that in this commissioner’s world, Martin County, Fla., firefighters could tie a rope to a Halligan, chuck it through a top-story window and effortlessly scale the building.
And since it’s only four stories, you may as well toss in a charged hand line and a Stokes basket for good measure.
Can’t you see these firefighters marching up the wall and stopping along the way to chat with celebrities who pop their heads out of the windows?
2. Free bird
As important as this effort was to the resident and the department’s public image, it does add a new dimension to the “have you ever seen a [insert preferred animal] skeleton in a tree” phrase.
California firefighters were called out to rescue a pet parrot from a tree. That’s right, I said rescue a bird from a tree. In the department’s defense, it was a great way to practice aerial operations in a low-stress setting.
I know this will come as a shock, but just as the firefighter was about to execute the rescue, the bird flew away.
3. Eau de what?!
Next, I have to offer this caveat: I’m a straight man and am probably not the best judge of what makes men sexually attractive. But a cologne that boasts smells of rubber and smoke has got to be off-putting, right?
It sounds nuts, but that’s exactly what a fragrance company is pitching as reasons to wear its Boston firefighter-scented perfume. The company CEO had this to say:
“We have an unusual approach to fragrances; we’re constantly looking for things that resonate. We originally wanted to create a perfume for the New York City Fire Department, but after the (bombing) events in Boston we decided to tailor the perfume for the Boston firefighters.”
Some are upset at the marketing ploy, one saying it was inappropriate to put tragedy in a bottle. It is not clear if it simply the idea they find offensive or if they’ve actually gotten a snoot full of the stuff.
4. What’s your emergency?
Lastly, access to health care, and mental health care, are such that many calls to 911 should never be placed. Yet they are, and if you can suspend your knowledge that the calls may be delaying response to a real emergency, they are a bit funny.
This story out of California has a treasure trove of such humorous calls. Whether it’s someone calling about the correct spelling of a street, someone wanting to know why the grass in the center of a highway is unmowed, or someone needing help finding the television remote control, its further proof that some people cannot define an emergency.
Or perhaps, we’ve become so self-centered as a society that any slight thing that goes wrong for us must be an emergency for everyone.
Whatever the case, it is typically left to us to make order out of chaos — and there is no shortage of chaos out there.