I got the chance to be an actual real hero monday evening!!! To explain I need to tell a little backstory. Most days of the week I tend to go to Chick Fil A for food, twice a day. On Sundays when they are closed and when my mother was living with me I would go get us italian, but, since I had to move her to an Assisted Living Facility over a week ago I have been going different places on Sunday for food as, I am still rather emotionally raw about it all and cannot handle going to the place I would get us our Sunday treat of italian food. SO, on Sunday I decided I wanted BBQ from a little place in the next town over, so, when i thought they still had an hour left of business <around 1911> I showed up to order some BBQ to go they were closed. I decided I would return the next day earlier in the evening, and that was yesterday. I showed up around 1830 to order food and yay they were open. I parked and noticed that the smoke house was smokier than usual, but, considering we had a bit of wind I paid no mind to it and went in to order. I place my order and went out to my car to be socially distant and after 25 minutes went back inside. I grabbed my food and went back out to my car. I should note I was parked maybe 40 feet MAX from the smokehouse. Anyway, I start walking to the car and looked into the smokehouse and saw naked flames. Seeing as during my wait for my food I saw people milling about behind me I figured someone from the store opened the pit to add more meat or wood and was ready to call it and get in the car. BUT, something just did NOT feel right, and I walked closer and looked into the smokehouse. Thats when I saw that the flames I saw was the pit and its surrounding structure actually BURNING, as in, on fire in a way other than to cook food. I ran into the store to tell them they needed to get someone outside as the smokehouse was starting to burn. One employee after about 10-15 seconds of processing what I had just said ran outside via a back door. By time I got outside he was already hosing the pit area down. After he got those flames out he opened the pit itself up and under normal circumstances seeing a few small flames as the wood burns slow is common, but, this time? The whole of the inside pit was rolling flames. It was incredible to see. Now, before I am asked let me answer some questions I am sure you want to ask:
1. I did not call 9-1-1 as the fire was still small enough that they had about 2-3 minutes before it was past the point that a garden hose could control it. This proved correct when the employee was able to douse the entire thing and bring the situation to a resolution.
2. No, I did not seek some kind of reward for my action, I just did what I did because it was the right thing to do.
3. This marks the third time they have had a fire there. First was about a decade ago or so that gutted the entire inside of the building, a few years later they lost the smokehouse to this exact sort of fire and had installed a camera to watch for this exact thing. This was the third time. The fire was still small enough that the smoke from it was hidden in the smoke coming from within the pit and on CCTV could have easily been mistaken for that.
4. I am fairly certain that had I not been there at that time and had they not been delayed by 30 minutes from being overly popular monday evening that they would have noticed the fire at a point where the towns Fire Station <oddly only like 2-3 blocks away, yup, small country town> would have been needed to stop the fire.
SO, thats what happened to me that is interesting lol.
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