So one night when I was about 16 I was going to eat with my mom and sister but we swung by Kmart so I could pick up my check beforehand. As we pulled up to the front doors so I could pop in real quick I spotted what looked like fire and a bunch of smoke coming from the back of a jeep about 1/2 way down the parking lot, along with a bunch of people just kinda standing around it in a panic.
I immediately ran inside, pointed at the customer service clerk and told her to call 911 for a car fire in the parking lot, ran over to the fire extinguisher on the post over by the cash registers, grabbed it, read the tag real quick and pulled the pin, and ran back out to the parking lot.
The back of the enclosed jeep was fully engulfed in flames by this time and everyone had taken several steps back except for the guy who owned it who was pacing back and forth not sure what to do. I tried to hand him the fire extinguisher and he just stared at me like I asked him to solve the theory of everything. So after a second or two I just opened the jeep door and sprayed the extinguisher and got covered from head to foot in the worst smelling soot that took several washings to come out of my winter coat, but the flames went out immediately.
I walked back into work, gave the fire extinguisher to the customer service clerk, and asked her for my check, and then we left. As we were leaving a couple fire trucks pulled in, but there really wasn't anything left for them to do.
I say all that because I was not trained to handle any emergency situations whatsoever. I just did what I thought needed to be done especially because no one else seemed to be doing anything. If I had a gun, it would never have entered my mind to point it at the Jeep. Even less so if the Jeep had been a person.
When your only tool is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail. For cops they start to look like tools. Congrats on being part of the 30% of humans that aren't useless in an emergency. Another 50% can be directed (such as being told to call 911, but you have to be specific). The final 20% suffers from normalcy bias so badly that they will impede the rest in an emergency.
I witnessed a similar thing happen at a house party when I was a kid. Once the fire started most people kinda froze and a couple people (including the house owner) panicked. My mom was the only one who seemed to "snap out of it" and grabbed the fire extinguisher from the kitchen to put the fire out.
Later in life I've been trained to point at specific people and give them specific tasks in an emergency. "YOU call 911! YOU get a first aid kit!" etc since that's supposed to be how you break the spell. But I'll never forget when i was twelve seeing about ten adults just freeze and all watch a fire creep its way up a curtain for twenty seconds.
So one night when I was about 16 I was going to eat with my mom and sister but we swung by Kmart so I could pick up my check beforehand. As we pulled up to the front doors so I could pop in real quick I spotted what looked like fire and a bunch of smoke coming from the back of a jeep about 1/2 way down the parking lot, along with a bunch of people just kinda standing around it in a panic.
I immediately ran inside, pointed at the customer service clerk and told her to call 911 for a car fire in the parking lot, ran over to the fire extinguisher on the post over by the cash registers, grabbed it, read the tag real quick and pulled the pin, and ran back out to the parking lot. The back of the enclosed jeep was fully engulfed in flames by this time and everyone had taken several steps back except for the guy who owned it who was pacing back and forth not sure what to do. I tried to hand him the fire extinguisher and he just stared at me like I asked him to solve the theory of everything. So after a second or two I just opened the jeep door and sprayed the extinguisher and got covered from head to foot in the worst smelling soot that took several washings to come out of my winter coat, but the flames went out immediately.
I walked back into work, gave the fire extinguisher to the customer service clerk, and asked her for my check, and then we left. As we were leaving a couple fire trucks pulled in, but there really wasn't anything left for them to do.
I say all that because I was not trained to handle any emergency situations whatsoever. I just did what I thought needed to be done especially because no one else seemed to be doing anything. If I had a gun, it would never have entered my mind to point it at the Jeep. Even less so if the Jeep had been a person.
When your only tool is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail. For cops they start to look like tools. Congrats on being part of the 30% of humans that aren't useless in an emergency. Another 50% can be directed (such as being told to call 911, but you have to be specific). The final 20% suffers from normalcy bias so badly that they will impede the rest in an emergency.
I witnessed a similar thing happen at a house party when I was a kid. Once the fire started most people kinda froze and a couple people (including the house owner) panicked. My mom was the only one who seemed to "snap out of it" and grabbed the fire extinguisher from the kitchen to put the fire out.
Later in life I've been trained to point at specific people and give them specific tasks in an emergency. "YOU call 911! YOU get a first aid kit!" etc since that's supposed to be how you break the spell. But I'll never forget when i was twelve seeing about ten adults just freeze and all watch a fire creep its way up a curtain for twenty seconds.