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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To expect neighbours to tell us their adjoining house is on fire?

81 replies

TrumanCapote · 28/10/2015 15:19

Had to stop lurking and join up for this one. Woke up early hours Monday coughing and hearing a screaming child; our house was full of a peculiar dirty smoke smell that I have never smelt before, and there was a fire engine outside and a distraught child all alone saying their kitchen was on fire and it's been put out.

Aibu to think that given how quickly fire can spread that we should have been warned? If they had to call the fire brigade and get their children out then they surely should have knocked? My dogs were sleeping in the adjoining room and my kids were upstairs ffs.

DH thinks iabu and shouldn't say anything to them as they would have been preoccupied savingthemselves and also because they are really rough and he doesn't want the hassle.

The house is rented it's semi detached, the landlord is invisible and the house is an absolute state think broken windows rubbish everywhere, stinks of weed, copious amounts of cats. They don't work and rents in the close are higher than HB. The landlord gives the address as his address on the land registry. Their children are practically feral and often wreak havoc. They didn't even have a fuvking smoke alarm!

OP posts:
SplatterMustard · 28/10/2015 16:11

YABU, plus you are being far too judgmental and there was no need for them to tell you; the fire brigade would have made sure you knew if you needed to. Get your own smoke alarms and take responsibility for your own family, thank goodness you aren't my neighbour - I wouldn't want to knock on your door either.

StrawberryTeaLeaf · 28/10/2015 16:12

I know the fire service would have alerted us to anything when necessary it was more my neighbours attitude I was concerned with, I would have warned them

Maybe by the time they were all out the fire service were on the scene and had taken over?

Maybe they've been hassling the LL for smoke alarms? ( I can't imagine not fitting them to a house I rented out. It's such a basic, I can't even remember if it's a legal requirement. I think so. )

Perhaps if you were friendlier, they would have ignored official advice and knocked anyway?

Original poster
TrumanCapote · 28/10/2015 16:13

Santa's- yes definitely but the neighbours have caused the damage to the house and so the LL being dreadful doesn't appear to concern them. DH asked for LL contact details numerous times to no avail, for things like their blocked drains overflowing to us etc. My personal judgement of them is probably clouding things yes - particularly my description of how they let their children run wild which was unnecessary.

OP posts:
BlueJug · 28/10/2015 16:15

OP getting a hard time here I think. I'd be furious if my neighbours didn't warn me - unless the fire service specifically told them not to. (OP wouldn't have known that before she posted as many of us didn't before DH2R told us.)

Actually I would hate to live next door to neighbours like this - we all would. And the LL should not be allowed to keep the house in a poor state - but as usual there is probably nothing that can be done.

StrawberryTeaLeaf · 28/10/2015 16:19

She'd have done better to stick to the pertinent facts. Maybe insufficient lurking? Grin

Pseudo341 · 28/10/2015 16:21

YANBU

If you discover a fire in a building you should alert everyone in that building. A pair of semis is effectively one building, fire's don't generally care who owns which bit. I'm horrified people wouldn't tell their neighbours the building's on fire.

VimFuego101 · 28/10/2015 16:24

YANBU. But I'm sure they weren't thinking straight. I would say your smoke alarms aren't working very well if they didn't go off when there was smoke in the house. Ours go off when we burn something in the kitchen, so they should be pretty sensitive.

Viviennemary · 28/10/2015 16:26

It would be up to the firebrigade to judge whether or not you were in any danger. I think the neighbours were right not to interfere. Move house if you're not happy. Working smoke alarms are very much the landlord's responsibility. It is illegal not to have them AFAIK.

Original poster
TrumanCapote · 28/10/2015 16:27

I'm judging them here yes but in RL I am courteous most of the time.

Everyone is different, personally I would have got everyone out before or whilst ringing 999, and then I would knocked on the adjoining house to warn them. I wouldn't only think of my family and not consider others. I understand they would be preoccupied but it would be instinct for me to warn them.

Thanks for the replies everyone, I'm going to leave it here as I just read over how awful my grammar is.

OP posts:
DamnBamboo · 28/10/2015 16:32

Pseudo it's not about someone wilfully not telling you there's a fire, it's about perhaps, you know, being a little busy with other things and having presumably gone into panic mode, making sure your own family, the ones in the actual burning area, are safe and evacuated.

Jux · 28/10/2015 16:32

I would have expected the firemen to knock at your door. That's what they did when the house next to our went up. We were a bit busy finding all our pets and getting to places as far from the fire as poss, collecting necessary things should we have to get out, and staying exactly where we were told to wait by the Fire Chief until they either needed to move us out or give us the OK.

Far too scared and worried about children, pets, grandparents etc and also told not to leave the room we were in, once we'd got needed bits together.

InTheBox · 28/10/2015 16:32

Stop with the strike throughs. You are not making this lighthearted in the slightest. If there was a fire I would too do my utmost to save as many people as I could but you are incredibly judgemental and as I commented upthread, you need to see about your own smoke alarms.

DamnBamboo · 28/10/2015 16:33

But truman with the best will in the world, you don't know what you'd do until you were in that situation!

Most people in theory think they'd do you as you've said, I bet in practice it's far fewer that actually do.

MrsTerryPratchett · 28/10/2015 16:34

I would have... We all like to think we know how we would behave in an emergency but the fact is that we don't. I was once in an emergency with a bunch of people. The only person who thought to run through the space telling everyone to evacuate was a teenage joy-rider. There were professionals there but the kid was the one who reacted well to the emergency.

People do blitheringly stupid things when alarms go off. I should know, I've been in a few.

StrawberryTeaLeaf · 28/10/2015 16:34

in RL I am courteous most of the time .

Wow and they didn't disregard the advice of authoritative emergency service personnel to rush to warn you about something non-hazardous?

Whodda thunk?

SantasLittleMonkeyButler · 28/10/2015 16:36

It's a pain that you don't know how to get hold of their LL to be fair. Whatever your personal opinion of the tenants you shouldn't have to put up with their blocked drains overflowing on to your property. Whether the tenants caused the damage or not, it is the LL's responsibility (or their agent) to either sort things out or start proceedings to evict the family. I assume there isn't a letting agent involved? If there was an agency board up before you moved in, could you ask the other neighbours whether they remember which firm it was?

Other than that, could you complain about the drains to the Council? If the tenants are receiving HB, they will have had to supply their LL's details to the Council as part of the claim. Obviously the Council won't pass them on to you, but could use them to contact him/her themselves if they felt there was a need.

Do try to stick to the pertinent facts though (i.e. mention the drains, even mention the rubbish everywhere if it's causing a health risk, but not what you really think of the people!).

Tinklewinkle · 28/10/2015 16:44

I don't think it's unreasonable. I would have thought a neighbour would bang on your door

We were in a similar situation years ago. We lived in an old semi detached cottage and our loft was open with the neighbours (couple in their 30s, no kids or pets or anything like that to get out) and they had an electrical fire in a bedroom they were using as an office.

Our smoke alarms woke us, but not before the fire had spread quite a bit. We were just waking up/working out what the hell was going on when the fire brigade banged on the door and we had to gather up baby DD, the dog and find the cat.

The fire brigade would have taken a good few minutes to arrive (our nearest fire station was about 7 miles away), and I would have thought the neighbour would have at least banged on the door, but they didn't

bloodyteenagers · 28/10/2015 16:45

Well when I had my fire, I didn't knock on anyone's doors. All I tried to do was get my kids out whilst phoning emergency services. And trying my best to manage my wild child and keep calm, not breathe in smoke to prevent an asthma attack.

And I wasn't working at the time. And my neighbours were complete arseholes who constantly gossiped about me and my uncontrollable wild child..

DH2R · 28/10/2015 16:52

"DH2R If you knew that an illegal activity had caused a fire, do you report it to the police?"

While I'm pretty sure the answer must be "yes of course", I've only just passed basic training, have only been on 6 shouts, of which only 3 were fire, and none I suspect involved anything illegal... so it hasn't cropped up as yet.

DH2R · 28/10/2015 17:24

PS. Thanks for kind words! :D

Atenco · 28/10/2015 20:49

Well without getting involved with your opinion of the neighbours, I totally agree that if your property catches fire and their is an adjoining property, once you have everyone from your house safe, you knock on your neighbours door to warn them, why wouldn't you?

However, there is no point in saying anything to them about it. That is just fighting for the sake of fighting and I HATE fighting with my neighbours, you always lose.

NeedsAsockamnesty · 28/10/2015 21:58

For what it's worth I have had a house burn down and I was far more concerned with my children than I was anybody else.

The fire brigade do everything practical and safety wise that's required and at the time were doing all they could to make me stay in one place

Original poster
TrumanCapote · 28/10/2015 22:06

DH and I have looked through the posts (to show him how right he was). I have been rightly told off for making it personal and for my dire sentence structure.

Thank you very much for your advice Santa's; there was an agent when they moved in and we have contacted them, as expected they are not involved with the property and can not divulge past clients details. We paid to fix the drain, that was a particular problem, ourselves amongst other things after getting nowhere - the neighbours were happy to let us which I guess is better than nothing.
DH is adamant that reporting them for anything will only result in making them worse, and even if they were evicted they could terrorise us for months before they actually had to leave. The problem with involving the environmental health and such, is that it would be very clear who reported them since those issues directly impact us. We are considering going through our insurance for the next issue of their property damaging ours and hopefully alerting the LL that way, rather than reporting them directly.I know other people must have reported them because SS and Rspca have been in and out.

I don't gossip about them with my neighbours at all. Letting the children out all hours with no supervision to damage others property on a weekly basis and calling it 'playing' isn't really managing them, but as I have promptly learnt this is a completely separate subject to the fire and I shouldn't have mixed it nor should I have brought up their circumstances.

I was joking when I said I was courteous most of the time. I am always courteous to my neighbours even the vile ones, I am not as vacuous as I have made myself appear. If I was as vile and it was all the fault of my attitude then I would have been more curt to some of these responses, although I can see why my judgement has elicited the replies, my lurking was definitely not sufficient Blush. I would LOVE to move (away from them) but amongst many reasons I'm sure the state of the neighbouring property has impacted upon the value of mine.

Thanks again DH2R. I wonder if there is a rule for reporting rented houses that don't have a smoke alarm fitted, although I'm certain the neighbours wouldn't have offered up this information as they wouldn't want the LL involved.

Tinkle - that is awful, glad you all got out in time! I am very grateful ours was a minor issue in comparison.

OP posts:
ZenNudist · 28/10/2015 22:11

This happened to my friend almost exactly the same situ. She 'd always slagged off her skanky neighbours and eventually they burnt their own house down taking hers with it and they didn't think to warn her and her family.

People are selfish. Yanbu.

BertieBotts · 28/10/2015 22:14

You don't know how you would react in a fire or what your "instinct" would be, FFS.

Landlords don't have to fit smoke alarms if the house was built before 1991, apparently, which is stupid, but I think it's because in newer houses they have to be mains connected whereas in older ones it's too much hassle, and perhaps battery ones are too unreliable and differ too widely to be able to be legislated about.