Canada Day 911

On Canada Day (a few days ago) Dana and myself were watching the movie "The Pink Panther" with Steve Martin (which I thought had some hilarious moments) when we looked out our window to see billowing smoke...

Lot's of it.

I jumped up to see what was going on outside and I saw tree branches, leaves, and grass all on fire. The city goes around each year and prunes certain trees in certain areas and it seemed that this is what was on fire, a bunch of green freshly cut tree leaves.

The thing is there was nobody around the fire. It looked as if it somehow caught fire and nobody knew it was happening... So I decided it was my time to do something I'd never done before.

"911, what is your emergency." The lady asked calmly.

I told her the situation, that there was brush on fire outside our house, that there was nobody around that was watching it, that my car was close and I was afraid it would blow up... and as I'm talking this legendary old dude with only a garden hose comes out of nowhere and aims the trickle of water towards the fire.

I told the 911 lady that someone just came out and looked like he was going to put this thing out... But she told me to go and tell him to not put it out as the fire fighters were on their way...

Let's be honest, who wants to go and tell someone they've just called the fire department on them and that they'd be there any second... Especially this dude, because whether he had the fire in control or not, he was definitely breaking some rules by having a brush fire right in the middle of Old Saint Boniface.

So I go out sort of sheepishly to the guy, "Is everything alright?" The guy didn't even acknowledge I was alive! I figured he just didn't speak English and decided to not tell him the fire fighters were coming.

I went back in the house and sure enough a couple minutes later I see a massive firetruck pull in front of our place... Four or five fire "people" (I guess they weren't all men) came out of the truck.

Then one guy climbed over the waist high fence, and shook his head. I wasn't sure if he shook his head in dismay that someone would be so stupid as to light all this brush on fire in the middle of the city, not covered or anything... or if he found it so stupid that someone would actually waist their time for this...

I think I got my answer when he grabbed the small garden hose and put out the fire with it.

Looks like I was the nigit in the whole scenario, but alas, what if no one ever came, the fire could've gotten out of control.

My car could have blown up.