My apartment complex is quite the place for drama.  I live far enough away from campus that instead of students, most of the apartments are occupied by a... er... less educated, often unemployed, lower income socioeconomic group.  There are police there about every other day, I'd guess.  I think most of the "incidents" are domestic violence cases.  Screaming matches at the pool, people being pushed down the stairs... I feel like I've seen it all.  There are loud drunk people, louder motorcycles, and dogs.  Lots and lots of dogs.

Sunday was just another day at the apartment.  I was sitting on my second-floor porch, innocently eating a graham cracker and enjoying the sunshine, when I noticed a flicker across the parking lot.  It was a fire!  Albeit tiny and dying, it was still a conflagration (thank you, 10th grade English).  Somehow, the corner of someone's porch had caught fire (I'm guessing a cigarette or someone getting a little overzealous trying to burn ants with a magnifying glass).  It was so small, I didn't know what to do.  I watched dumbly as a guy walked out of his apartment, looked at it puzzedly, tried to knock on the door, got no answer, and disappear back into his apartment.  I wandered outside at one point, but he beat me to knocking on their door (I let him).  I wasn't even sure who to call!  Would the 911 operator get mad because it was so small and I was taking resources away from other, potentially life-threatening situations?  Would the apartment owner be angry if I tried to be the hero and extinguish it myself, because the fire was actually his mini sacrifical alter or a grand scientific experiment and I managed to douse his dreams with naught but a pitcher of water?  So, instead, I chose option 3, which is "gawk uselessly and let the responsibility fall on someone else."  A few minutes later, no thanks to me, two large fire trucks, sirens blaring and lights flashing, pulled up, followed by another, although smaller, truck.

Approximately nine thousand firefighters exited the trucks.  After examining the barely-smoldering mess on the porch, one man grabbed a ladder, one grabbed some sort of scraper, and one grabbed a glorified fire extinguisher.  The three men went to work while the other 8,997 watched and chatted among themseles.  (As a side note, real-life firemen are not as attractive as in the movies/TV/imagination.  Sad day.)  The men climbed, sprayed, and scraped, and after about fifteen minutes the entire extremely anticlimactic event was over.

I feel like I failed as a citizen.  Don't be alarmed; had the fire posed any real threat to the porch, building, or people, I would have taken immediate action.  The issue was in the non-issue of the entire situation.  What would you have done?