I started a fire today, ended up calling the fire department to help put it out. It was a small code enforcement job for the city of Orlando cutting down a couple dead trees along a sidewalk and ditch. Not much left to the trees other than about 30' of very punky trunk and a couple rotten stubs. The first one started smoldering while I was cutting it down and I thought I had it out, checked each piece and didn't see any smoke or embers. By the time I finished the second one, about 3-4 chunks of the first one were smoking pretty good. I dragged the burning chunks out onto the sidewalk and tried to isolate them but there was a 15+ mph breeze blowing the embers back towards the dry sawdust and 20 years of decayed crap on the ground.
After about 10 minutes I realized I wasn't going to be able to put it out any time soon, and I was busy chasing embers that kept igniting toward the ditch. So I called the fire department and the pumper truck was pulling up before I got off the phone with the operator (about 2 minutes, they were right up the street). They pulled out their small 1.5" hose and soaked it down while another guy hooked up a bigger hose to the hydrant 50' away so they could refill their tank on the truck. Took them about 20 minutes and 3 tries to get everything extinguished. I hope they got everything, because I left as they were leaving. If it sparks up again this afternoon then somebody else will have to call it in.