Firefighters Are Revealing the Dumbest People They Ever Had to Save

Dad was a Firefighter in NYC and once responded to a call at a Chinese food restaurant where the owner's walkway was iced over. 

He apparently didn't speak very good English and maybe misunderstood the job of a fireman? 

Genuinely don't know. They salted down his front walkway for him and explained that this was 100% not their job. 

They all had a good laugh and the guy gave them all free eggrolls. 

Turkeybaconisheresy

Hurricane Floyd. Eastern NC. 

I had a farmer with a large family that refused to evacuate his house. Stubborn bastard.

River had broke loose, floodwaters were coming up fast, and the police had given up on changing his mind. 

I drove my truck right up into his yard, 

rolled down the window and asked him to dress his kids in something orange or bright yellow.

He asked me why and I said, 

"So body recovery will be able to distinguish them from all the dead pigs floating around."

He told me to f**k off, but five minutes later he had the whole family in the vehicle and they got the hell out.

Ken_Thomas

I was the dumb call. my cat got her paw stuck under the dishwasher, and was screaming bloody murder. 

I couldn't move her paw and I couldn't lift the machine, so I sat with her while my husband called the fire department. 

She chewed right through one of my favorite blankets in her stress.

Firefighters arrive, not in full suits but heavy boots and pants. 

As soon as they came around the corner to the kitchen, our cat miraculously was able to free her paw and take off to hide in the bathroom.

The guys seemed confused, but at least it was easy? 

We thanked them profusely for being scary enough to free our cat, who had zero physical damage (not even a broken claw). 

I guess she'd hooked her claws on something and didn't want to let it go for love or money.

[deleted]

It wasn't really his fault, but we had an old guy in a nursing home get his balls stuck in a shower chair. 

There are holes in the seat to allow for drainage and stuff. 

He sat down and popped one through.

The_Phantom_W

Recently in San Diego, a group of suburban moms decided to take their infants up the local hiking spot called Cowles Mountain. It’s not a particularly grueling hike as many children and elderly people can do it. 

However there is a heat stroke warning posted at the trail head. Not to mention it can get pretty hot here and this last week was no exception with temperatures exceeding 90 degrees.

Well, these idiots took their infants up in this heat. The trail is pretty exposed and due to its easy accessibility and “instagram-worthiness” lots of inexperienced hikers flock to it. 

Many times with little to no water because they underestimated how hot and difficult it could be.

Needless to say the fire department/ems and chopper were all called as these moms had taken their babies up and were too tired and exhausted to come down. 

They had to go up and give water, check their conditions and some even carried the babies down.

I know fires are a lot hotter but I bet they were cursing out these moms in their heads as they had to hike up the mountain in pretty much full gear. The moms came strolling down laughing and flipping off the [TV] cameras as they were angry people were going to see their stupidity.

This happened all because they wanted to take a group photo with their infants on a mountain on a hot day

kawhiLALeonard

I was called to a home to get a pie out of the over before it caught fire. 

The lady went to the store and was delayed for some reason. 

She called 911 to have the fire department take the pie out of the oven and place it on the stove. 

The call came in as "Something stuck in oven and unable to turn off stove."

Still #1 call in 32 years.

Redditor

A young [teenage] girl who decided those toddler swings with the seat you stick their legs through like a little basket 

so they can't fall out was made for a teenage girl. 

She got stuck and lost blood flow to her legs. 

We had to cut her down and get her to a hospital to have it safely removed 

due to it basically becoming a tourniquet on both her legs.

payperplain

We needed to close the main connection through a forest over the winter because the trees were falling faster on the road than we could remove them due to way to much snow falling. 

Also the redirection was more than an hour longer due to the snow.

Some cars thought that they would come through but turned around as soon as they saw the trees on the road.

One semi driver also thought he'd get through. 

He drove up to the trees and called the fire brigade and complained why we didn't remove the trees. 

As he was calling a bunch of trees behind him also fell locking him in.

It stood there one month before the trees and the snow could get removed by us that at least the semi can back out. 

We needed another month until the road was free again.

Horizon317

I remember asking a firefighter about this once, 

and he said a guy who was [having relations with] a woman. 

When her husband came home, 

so he jumped out the second story window naked and impaled himself through the upper leg on a fence paling.

It was one of those fleur de lis ones, so it [messed] up his leg pretty badly. 

They had to cut the paling out of the fence and load him into an ambulance.

JimmyL2014

My dad was on the Boston Fire Department for a little over 35 years. For 13 of those years, he worked at a fire station in Dorchester. In Dorchester, there is a zoo. The Franklin Park Zoo. One morning in late September, they get a call to the Franklin Park Zoo for a young girl mauled by a gorilla.

This is the sort of call they’d get all the time. Gorilla jumps at the glass, kid gets scared, parents panic and call 911.

So they hop in the truck and ride on over. It’s one of those kinda foggy early fall mornings as they walk into the zoo. A couple of the other firefighters start walking into the zoo as my dad notices a man sitting on a bench holding a little girl in his arms. Assuming this is what the call is for, he walks over to the man. The little girl has a scrape on her forehead and she’s crying but is otherwise fine. The man looks like he just saw a ghost. So my dad asks the guy what’s going on.

The man just says, “Little Joe is out.”

My dad says, “What does that mean?”

The man just repeats “Little Joe is out.”

So my dad says, “Who the hell is Little Joe?”

Little Joe is a 500lb adolescent male silverback gorilla. Loose in the streets of Boston. It’s right about now that my dad realizes that he’s not exactly qualified to handle a gorilla, but he doesn’t know who to call, so he calls everyone.

Two minutes later the fire chief shows up, not knowing what the call was about yet and, jumps out of his car saying “Mark, Mark, is this about a F***ING gorilla!?”

My dad says “Yeah, but how’d you hear that?”

The chief says “He’s standing at the bus stop on Seaver Street!”

Now the SWAT team shows up, hats on backwards, M16s in hand and my dad, being the smarta** he is, looks at the sergeant and says “Hey, I don’t think this thing is armed!”

He caught a bit of flak for that later on.

Animal control and the SWAT team worked together to take down Little Joe. It took 14 tranquilizer darts before he finally went unconscious.

Little Joe is still alive and well at the Franklin Park Zoo.

Bidiggity

Had to transport a guy to the ER because he was constipated. 

His wife tried to dig it out with a wooden spoon. 

Spoon got stuck and hurt to move it.

Walked in and there’s a 250 lb. man, butt naked, 

lying on his side with a huge wooden spoon stuck halfway up his butt.

Gruppet

Had a drunk guy in Antarctica chase a penguin. 

Penguin stuck his beak through the offending drunk guy's calf. 

He got sent home, 

and a report on international treaty breach wound up on some congress member's desk.

Oh McMurdo, how I miss thee.

[deleted]

Just asked this question of a firefighter friend. 

He saved a guy who was siphoning gas out of someone's car by sucking gas towards his mouth to start the siphon. 

The would-be-thief was also smoking while doing it. 

Burns happened.

zictomorph

I used to work in a NYC public grammar school over the summers to pay for college back in the '90s. One of the full-time employees was a nice guy but stupid. 

And I don't mean he was slow or anything, he just did dumb shit because he was careless. 

One time he loaded up a trailer with like 25 gallons of gas and was driving it back through the main school parking lot. 

He didn't realize that container cracked open and spilled all 25 gallons in the parking lot. 

He didn't want to get in trouble so he thought the best way to get rid of the evidence was TO SET THE GAS ON FIRE. 

He didn't realize that burning gas gives off a LOT of black smoke and a gigantic cloud of black smoke coming from a school generally attracts a lot of attention from first responders. 

Panicking, he tries to put the flaming lake of gas out by DRIVING OVER IT WITH HIS CAR. 

The fire department gets there, screaming at him to stop driving his car through flaming gasoline. 

They finally get the fire out and just screamed at this guy for like 25 minutes. It was the funniest thing I've ever seen.

-Words-Words-Words-

Not a firefighter. This happened to my son when he was 6. 

He was at a Cub Scout meeting which was next door to the fire station. 

The firefighters had these racks where they'd lay their hoses out to dry (I think). 

The little scouts were climbing on those racks one day and my son's chubby leg slipped between the bars and got stuck.

 The firefighters had to come use the Jaws of Life on their own damn racks to free my kid.

Brainyviolet

While working on the ambulance, I got called to a house for a man "choking on peanut butter." 

We get on scene and determine that the guy is stoned off his ass. 

He is able to breathe, talk, and swallow without issue. 

He just feels like there's so much peanut butter stuck in his mouth that it’s making him choke. 

I asked him if he tried drinking anything or rinsing his mouth out with water. 

He looked at me as if I was the most genius guy to have ever lived. 

Ran to his kitchen, got a Coke, and started drinking it. 

He looked at me and said, "Thanks man, you saved me for real."

texasmedic817

Years ago we had this call straight out of Caddyshack.

Some guy had gotten tired of this gopher ruining his yard. Little did he know though he was facing the Sun Tzu of gophers. 

The homeowner, dwelling upon his experience from Vietnam, decided that the best way to deal with the gopher was to treat the situation like a VC tunnel, in lieu of a frag grenade he poured a five-gallon can of gasoline down the gopher hole, waited with a varmint gun, and lit it off.

The ensuing explosion caused a small crater to form in his yard. I am still thoroughly impressed that there was a proper fuel to air ratio in the network of tunnels that allowed for such an explosion to happen. 

However the gopher refused to surrender without a fight.

The gopher ran out of the hole engulfed in flames, causing the guy's yard to catch on fire.

Then the gopher sprinted into the guy's shed while still on fire and burrowed into a void space in the wall, where he died. 

Like the martyr perk from Modern Warfare his still flaming remains set the inside of the wall on fire as well as several flammables.

In the end the guy's backyard was ruined and about a quarter of his shed burned down taking out a bunch of power tools and a zero turn mower. He definitely would have saved a few thousand dollars if he had hired an exterminator.

grim_wizard

I once had a firefighter tell me he almost died in a house fire while going back into the house to look for the owner. 

A neighbor was concerned about why the firefighter was still in the residence so he asked another firefighter. 

This is about how the exchange went:

Neighbor: "Why is that fireman still in the house?"

Firefighter: "He's looking for the owner of the home."

Neighbor: "He is right over there with the video camera."

Turns out the owner did not think it was important to alert the fire department he was out of the house. Instead, he was just taking video of the whole event.

The fire started because the owner had tried to smother his barbecue cooker flame with left over wood from the siding that had been installed on his home. 

The owner did not realize it would burn. Burned his whole house down.

FountainofR

I'm not the firefighter, but my brother's wife at the time was.

There was this massive structure fire at a barn in town that drew out nearly every truck in the general area--like three towns worth of firefighter trying to get this thing under control. During all of this, there was some lady who continuously called 911 asking over and over again "What's going on at the farm up the road?" 

According to her, this woman would have to be a complete moron to not realize what was going on as the fire could be seen for miles.

Fast forward later into the night and one of the ambulances on scene suddenly leaves - obviously not normal for this sort of situation, but there isn't much time to question it. Fast forward still and as things are finally starting to calm down and are under control, one of the volunteers on the original ambulance comes over in his own car and shuffles sheepishly over to her and the chief of their department. 

He tells them that there is a woman a little ways down the road who called the ambulance (hence why they left) and requires a lift assist, but absolutely REFUSES to let the EMTs do it. No no, it has to be a firefighter....

My brothers wife seeing that the other departments have things under control, goes with the man to see what's up. Apparently, it was the same woman who had called 911 over and over again and when they arrive, she is laying on the floor absolutely wailing.

EMTs say they can't find anything wrong from what they've been able to do,but with her requested firefighter they are finally able to get this woman up. They start asking her what happened, hoping she might be more willing to share with my brother's wife there and she says....

"I was just feeling a little ignored. I figured this would get your attention"

Grown woman just laid herself on the floor, called for help, insisted on a firefighter when there was no need - all because the barn fire was getting way more attention than she was and the 911 operators wouldn't give her the gossip about what was going on.

sparkleNSunshine

A motorist had a bad alternator and the car died while she/he was driving. 

The electric lock control stopped working. 

We were dispatched for a person trapped in a motor vehicle. 

On arrival, the advice was given to manually lift the lock knob.

You can easily tell the ones who will not survive the first 24 hours of the zombie apocalypse.

LTBT

Fire department and the paramedics [were called] because some kid didn’t know the difference between a swimming pool and a splash pad...

There’s this artificial waterfall that goes down into a basin that’s only about 2 inches deep where there’s fountains and stuff for kids to play in. 

This kid decided to climb up the waterfall (there are multiple signs posted not to do this) 

and decided to dive off into the water below that again is only 2 INCHES DEEP!

Luckily the kid landed flat on his face so he survived and avoided being paralyzed but he was knocked out cold immediately and would have probably drowned 

but luckily his mother heard the splat and came running over screaming and pulled him out.

kg1206

I was a volunteer firefighter many years back. One summer, after a long period of no rain, two good old boys decide to have a few (dozen) beers and take their Jeep into a nearby field to go off-roading.

Well, ~2 ft. tall corn stalks that are bone-dry wind-up getting jammed up into the undercarriage, which, on a 90+ degree day, turns out to be hot enough to ignite a fire. 

The owner of the field sees the situation unfolding from their house and calls for fire and police.

Given the proximity to my location, I go directly to the scene after hearing the page go out and see these two [jerks] trying to drive the Jeep faster and faster to put the fire out. Eventually, the engine gives out, but they won’t leave the car. 

I physically had to reach-in, burning my arms in the process (since I didn’t respond to the station first to get my turnout gear), 

and pull them out - somehow, they decided that remaining in the car would slowdown the flames.

And because they thought it was a good idea to continue driving a burning vehicle around a dry field, we now have a significant brush fire and have to call mutual aid from another county to help douse the fire.

State Police get involved, I have a nice trip to the hospital. And a**holes lose their Jeep and the remainder of their booze.

Xaipe32

Former firefighter/EMT. Easily the dumbest person I encountered was a mother of 4 

who decided it would be an awesome idea to get a Facebook/Instagram worthy picture of her kids (all under age 10) sitting in a rowboat.

Mother untied it from the dock and thought she'd just pull them back with the rope...that she forgot to hold on to.

They floated a half mile down the river before the two oldest boys managed to grab a branch hanging over the bank.

It was really surreal to see four young kids, all in matching clothing, sitting in a boat waiting to be rescued. 

I have no clue what happened after, but they were physically fine, 

just scared, a little tired but the mom was in full-blown panic mode and kept getting in our way. 

I hope she's making better choices now.

FrankieFillibuster

My dad was a firefighter in Los Angeles and was doing ember checks for a building fire that they just put out. 

A stray cat walks into the building like nothing happened. 

So my dad, being the joker he is, 

sees the cat and sees the news crews standing outside the building. 

So he quickly picks up the cat, throws a little soot on it, and runs out the building like he just saved it, 

in front of all of the world to see.

Jamn27

Heard this story from a friend. Emergency call comes in for a miscellaneous electrical hazard. 

Chief walks in and a woman tells him that the TV in the bedroom is making a weird noise. 

It's turned off but there's a low buzzing sound coming from the area. 

Chief unplugs the TV (which she didn't think to do?) and the noise doesn't stop. 

The TV is sitting on top of a chest of drawers, 

so he opens up the top drawer and finds this woman's vibrator just buzzing away. Super awkward.

stewy23

Two bikini clad girls had to be rescued from a swift moving river in a canoe. 

Neither girl brought a life vest or a PADDLE.

John_Wick_Detroit

Dude picked up a metal ring from a hardware store in lieu of paying for an actual cock ring.

It got stuck. He went to the hospital. 

The hospital called the fire department because a dremel tool turned out to be the right tool for the job.

invadermoody

Dumb*ss tried to cross a raging river in zero-degree weather 

(about a 300-foot span) on a snowmobile. 

He lived but didn't make the crossing and the machine was recovered days later.

John_Wick_Detroit

Former fire and rescue firefighter here...

have helped release several dogs and children stuck in the mechanism part of a recliner chair. 

Also a bird stuck in a tree, go figure.

probandaidputeroner

Me and my dad are both firefighters and he said one time they went to a house because an elderly man could not get out of the leather recliner 

because he had been sitting in it for a week straight and his wife would just serve him drinks/ food and the guy never got up.

He would just get drunk and urinate/defecate himself until he was physically stuck to the chair and they had to cut him out.

TheULCgoat