As a director, I am used to a certain amount of damage control. As a stage manager, I understand about safety and such. As a neighbor, I was presented with an interesting problem.
Walking towards my front door, keys in hand, a woman approaches me. "Do you live here?" Uh, yeah. "Because there is a fire, and I can't notify the right person." Uh... Follow this woman to the next building, and sure enough, there is a smoldering, smoking planter.
Can't say it summoned any panic or energy. I just walked back to my house, walked downstairs and asked for the fire extinguisher from my landlady. Calmly walked over and hosed down the offending planter. Unfortunately, instead of the foam, the extinguisher dispensed a fine powder. Which, along with the smoke, just blew towards me as the front came through. *cough* Some other neighbors kept telling me to get away from the planter. I just brandished the fire extinguisher with more flair. The fire seemed to be in the middle of this bundle of dirt and decoration in the planter, which was unaffected by the fire extinguisher. So I walked back to the house to get a bucket of water to dump on this pile.
As I was filling the bucket again with water, the fire department shows up. With about the same amount of alarm, they walked up, dumped the contents of the sadly-not-blazing planter, poured water on it, laughed and left.
My landlady thought I was being so nice for going over to put out the not-fire. To me, it had less to do with being nice and more to do with just being responsible. I couldn't not do something. Besides, I have always wanted to blast a fire extinguisher.
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