Fires develop crazy fast, too. Horrifying real-time footage of The Station nightclub fire is on YouTube. Within 2 minutes of ignition, fire is leaping out the windows. By 6 minutes in, the entire building is burning like a torch.
Anyone talking up firefighters like this clearly hasn't been around them much.
They're boys with toys that they don't frequently get to use and they work for the government. Follow the incentives. They'll do their jobs but they don't give a lot of fucks about things like "unnecessary property damage" and "other people's financial well being" and anything else not written in their KPIs.
I used to drive tow truck. I can't count the number of cars they totaled peeling the roof off (granted some were totaled anyway) because that was easy and cutting a door off was hard. And don't get me started on them and their stupid stands they use to prop shit up in the most questionable of ways...
I make many accounts because I don't like people snooping through my history. The Redditism of "I've looked back 10 years in your history, and will dismiss your comment because of something you said in 2015" is not a discussion I'm interested in.
Most of their calls are mundane stuff. And they leave a pretty decently wide path of destruction in doing that. We're talking like mundane situations where there is no urgency and no need to tear shit up in the interest of time.
I once arrived to a minor rollover after the cops but before fire. Nobody injured. Occupant trapped because she was a large lady and couldn't release her seatbelt upside down and was having difficulty unlocking the car because side curtain airbags.
I offered to flip the car and treat it like a lockout. "Customer" was fine with it. Cop was iffy. FD showed up, didn't want to hear it, broke the window, unlocked the car, opened the door, cut her belt rather than release it and dropped her on her face and then had difficulty getting her out. Now I get that they have "procedures" but this seems like a forest for the trees situation.
Or they'll show up, shut down two lanes for a minor fire on the shoulder and not move the trucks until the car is loaded on a tow truck and gone. Supposedly it's to keep them safe from being hit by traffic. Meanwhile here I am not blocking traffic to recover shit that broke down.
Sure, they'll save a life if the situation presents itself but they sure don't care about being tidy about it.
They won't hesitate to smash your stuff or break down your walls either.
Being in a fire is no joke. You've got to be crazy to think that your stuff is important. It's not.