Every call has a problem of its own

A cat on a roof, a dog in a light well. It is the small emergency that is not a fire, and it gives the quiet districts something to do.

Part of a building site comes down with people underneath. What decides it here is not talking to anyone or reaching high up, but getting someone out from under something, so it counts to have people who know structures.

A birth going wrong at home. Over the phone it sounds a lot like any other medical emergency from the same address, so asking is the only thing that tells them apart.

A sports centre, a museum or a station with a lot of people inside who have to get out. It is the only call where the problem is the people and not the fire, since there may be no flames at all and the building still has to be emptied.

The most expensive call to handle and the one that ties up the most units at once. It is what comes with taking on an industrial estate, since that is where it shows up.

A fire in a shop or an office. Premises like these are rarely on their own, since there are usually homes above and the smoke climbs the light well before it reaches the door, and mid-morning there are a lot of people inside.

It does not depend on whether it is raining now, but on how long it has been raining: twelve millimetres in an hour wet the street, and twelve an hour for half a day fill a basement. It shows up in garages and street-level premises.

A lorry or a tank letting out something that should not be outside. It is where coming up short costs more than on any other call, and where the caller almost never says what is really there.

It only shows up when the heat really bites, and past thirty-eight degrees it is the likeliest thing to happen in a doorway. A day like that changes the medical workload of the whole city.

Fire in a house or a flat, with neighbours out on the balconies and smoke in the stairwell. If nobody arrives and it can grow no further, it jumps to the building next door and a new call appears.

The air inside a warehouse stops being breathable. It is not the same as a lorry letting something out in the street, since here what is there is shut in and anyone who goes in comes out contaminated.

People shut in between two floors. It is usually not serious, but it stops being so if someone inside is unwell, and there is no way to know without asking. It shows up in buildings of four floors or more.

A school canteen or a factory shift, with several people taken ill at once. What makes it big is not how serious any one patient is, but that there are many of them at the same time.

Someone is taken ill at home. It is the most frequent call and the one that keeps the rhythm going between the big ones, with a short deadline that leaves little room to think it over.

Someone is missing and an area has to be searched on foot. It is the only call where sending more people than the minimum genuinely shortens the search, so how many go out matters as much as who.

When the power goes out in a district, anyone who depends on a plugged-in device is left without it: an oxygen concentrator, a ventilator, an insulin pump. It only exists while the outage lasts.

Someone at the edge of a building. What is needed is time and somebody who knows how to talk to them, not getting there quickly, which is why knowing whether they are still talking to the caller changes everything else.

A small fire in a classroom, and almost always the first one to show up in a game. It starts as very little, but if nobody arrives it grows until it looks like one of the big fires.

Two cars, or a car and someone on foot. It is the call that mixes what gets put out with what gets treated, since there can be people trapped inside and injured people outside at the same time.

A car burning underground is nothing like one burning in the street, because the smoke has nowhere to go and the entrance ramp is narrow, which makes working down there far harder.