Better safe than sorry.

There’s nothing OTT about that level of response for a large hotel with loads of guests, late at night. That would be fairly standard response from any modern fire department.
I’m glad to see they reacted promptly and with plenty of resources!

The fire services have to be prepared for the worst, even if 99.999% of the time it turns out to be a small and easily contained incident. You don’t have the luxury of time in a fire & rescue situation.

4 sounds short.

There were more than 4 there

You think 4 appliances is too many? 4 appliances, with 4 firefighters/drivers, 4 officers and 3 firefighters in the back of each appliance. So probably using hoses from 2 appliances, which the drivers are the pump operators, that leaves 14 firefighters, to get water from hydrants, assist in the evacuation of the hotel, check for fire spread, clearing toxic smoke and gases that would have penetrated parts of the building. Then at the business end of the job, assuming by your ignorance you’ve never actually been inside a fire in a laundry? Which I have by the way… Usually extremely hot due to the slow burning nature of most of the materials in there, that produce a massive amount of heat and very dense smoke! Even trying to find the source of the fire can take an eternity, it might be worth noting at this stage that a 1 degree rise in body temperature increases the pulse rate of an adult by 20 beats per minute, meaning increased respiration, using the air in your breathing apparatus cylinder even faster. So if there’s 4 of us in trying to fight the fire in these conditions, and at least 2 waiting outside fully kitted out to rescue us in case conditions change, with 1 firefighter acting as an entry control officer to the hazardous area that now leaves 7 crew members to complete all the other requirements at the scene. And if the fire can’t be dealt with within the 25 minute duration of the compressed air cylinder on your back, we swap around and change roles..

Gosh!, that smart comment didn’t go down well this morning, serious amount of red thumbs!

I lolled at it x