fake fires

I woke up at midnight last night to one of my smoke detectors going off. Not "chirping" like everyone kept asking me and trying to tell me that's what was happening, but going off like there was a fire. It's also one that's connected to the wall with a wire, not one you can pop off and take the battery out. So I call my parents and wake them up to ask what the hell to do. Dad didn't know and wasn't being helpful so I basically hung up on him (5 minutes later of him not helping) and called 311. They told me I had to call 911, which I did.

I was scared they would show up in all their gear and chop my door down with an ax and be pissed I called them for nothing. So literally 3 minutes after hanging up with the fire dispatcher 4 HUGE firefighters show up. I was disappointed because a. they weren't cute, b. they were all over 40, and c. they weren't even in their gear, they were in street clothes and fire department jackets. So one guy goes and unplugs it and tells me I just need to have the maintenance people give me a new one, while another guy is videotaping my entire apartment, and the other 2 schmos are just standing there doing nothing. So the schmos and the guy who actually did something left, while the videotaping one continued walking around taping. Finally the helpful one walked back in and yelled "Eric, what the hell are you doing? Stop taping that cat and get out of there!"

The entire time I kept thinking about how Rebecca and Crissy almost burned down the blue house. The difference between our experiences were theirs was an actual emergency.