Slashdot Mirror
Firefighters Let House Burn Because Owner Didn't Pay Fee
Dthief writes "From MSNBC: 'Firefighters in rural Tennessee let a home burn to the ground last week because the homeowner hadn't paid a $75 fee. Gene Cranick of Obion County and his family lost all of their possessions in the Sept. 29 fire, along with three dogs and a cat. "They could have been saved if they had put water on it, but they didn't do it," Cranick told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann. The fire started when the Cranicks' grandson was burning trash near the family home. As it grew out of control, the Cranicks called 911, but the fire department from the nearby city of South Fulton would not respond.'"
Wouldn't work. Look, it's not like there are fire hydrants out there. That fire department depends on those fees to get tank trucks and other stuff you have to have to fight rural fires. If you could just pay as you go, then no one would ever pay, and the fire department wouldn't be able to afford the equipment.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
They turned up to stop the spread of the fire to a neighbouring property, then they stood and watched as the house burnt to the ground, killing the animals inside. The guy forgot to pay $75, offered to make good on it, and they refused, they just watched his house, his life's possessions, and his pets burn alive.
I don't care who you are, that's callous beyond anything I wish to respect.
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
A publicly funded fire brigade? What's next? Public healthcare? You dirty socialist!
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
Dude, it's the state, not the country. Don't blame fricking Obama for the problems of Fulton County Tennesee's rural fire department! That's just absurd.
In most other states, there'd be a state income tax, or a hefty county tax, or a sales tax or something to support fire coverage for all the citizens in the county. They didn't want that there, so there is a fee. And if you don't pay it, you're screwed. And it's their own bed to lie in.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Easy solution: Put out the fire, then hit him with a massive fine. Say 10x the actual cost of fighting the fire.
What is next a cop fee and if you don't pay the cops will just stand there as you get raped as you did not pay the fee?
fireman and cops should be payed for with taxes!
also will the fireman pass up a burning car as they don't know if the people in the car payed?
This what the republic want for health care but with health care buying on your own can cost $1000+ month with a big list of stuff not coved and if you are sick then it can be hard to get it at all. Some job only have that min med that cost about $700+ year + copays with $2000 MAX YEAR PAY OUT AND that is joke care.
The City of South Fulton doesn't have the authority to issue fines to people who don't live in their town.
"Why not put out the fire and then bill him for the $75?"
I was thinking he should get a fine, like parking meters, it's only 50 cents an hour to park YMMV and no one's watching too closely and you could park and not pay, but if you're caught it's a $50+ fine.
I say put out the fire and bill him $7500+. If he don't pay put a lien on the house and take the house.
But to just stand there and watch it burn? That should be criminal, what if people died? I think the firefighters should go to jail. What has his world come to when the people sworn to serve and protect decide not to? Sounds like anarchy.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
While yes it is sad that this happened to the family, I think this is a fantastic example of what happens when right wing capitalist values meet reality. They are so obsessed over the evils of socialism, how forcing people to pay for services 'used by other people' is anathema.
So here is what happens when you don't feel you should have to put money into the collective pool for social services. Thanks but no thanks. If some relatively small taxes is the price I have to pay for this kind of peace of mind, I'll take it every time.
"Blame the government that set up a no-win situation."
You mean, blame the people that voted for the gov't that set up the no-win situation. People blame the gov't all the time -- without realizing THEY ARE THE GOV'T. As a citizen, you are responsible for your gov't...not the other way around.
The tricky part here is the externalities(as usual, externalities are a bitch). So, the Cranicks don't pay, they don't get service. Simple enough. There might be some ethical objections; but the economics line up just fine.
Similarly, letting them pay $75 at time of use is a no-go. Fighting a fire costs way more than $75. That's an insurance price, not a retail service price. If you allow people to buy insurance after they need it, you either go bankrupt or the cost of insurance ends up equaling the retail cost of service. You then lose the risk-pooling function of insurance. Now, for things as potentially valuable as houses and their contents, it would be sensible to have an actual retail price(set ahead of time, and publically known, to prevent extortion) that an uninsured person could pay to save a burning building, there are probably a fair few situations where the price of fighting the fire is lower than the cost of replacing the structure, so being able to pay a retail cost of approximately actual cost+service fee would be sensible for both householder and firefighting company.
However, here is where things get unpleasant: Because the Cranicks didn't pay, the firefighters allowed the fire to burn merrily, growing and spreading until it hit somebody who had paid. Now, since the paying householder's property is on fire, they likely suffered some thousands or 10s of thousands in direct combustion, smoke, and water damage. They paid, and they got shitty service. Had the firefighters used the Cranicks property to fight and stop the fire, they could have saved their customers from any damage, and done a much better job of serving them, the ones who actually paid.
Of course, if it becomes known that firefighters will fight fires around an insured property, the obvious strategy is for property owners to club together, buy insurance for 1 plot and get insurance for all for only $75/n. The fire department couldn't support itself on that. If they tried to offer two tiers, a $75 "Fires fought on your property only" and a more expensive "Fires that threaten your property fought", then this creates a perverse incentive: If I live next to a wealthy looking neighbor, I can get him to buy my fire insurance for me just by making my property more dangerous to his. Don't want to encourage that.
This is why firefighting, like certain public health measures, is very hard to elegantly force into a market model unless you are so far in the sticks that each man really is an island. Fires spread, just like diseases. Whether or not the firefighters come to my neighbor's aid matters to me(aside from any debatable moral stuff); because the raging inferno that is his burning house just needs the wind to shift for my house to be next. Even if I've paid my fee, having thousands in water damage from the firefighters, plus smoke and any combustion that occurs before they get there isn't really satisfying. I'd really rather have them fight the fire where it starts, and never have to suffer it myself, rather than insist that everyone pay, and let pockets of fire spread until they endanger me. Same way, even if I don't give a fuck about the life of the guy making my sandwich at the deli, and I don't care how poor he is, I sure do care about what immunizations he has, and whether he can take sick days; because his germs are getting into my food supply.
That is the real complexity of this story, in my opinion. There are some moral questions, but those are debatable, and there really should be a retail price set; but that is a bookkeeping matter; but if I were the insured householder I'd be absolutely livid about this. I paid my dues, and I get lousy service because they are trying to make a point? You could have completely protected my property; but chose to let a nearby building become a danger to it, when I pay you to protect my property? WTF?
There is a lot more information about this out there from other sources
According to the Mayor of the Town involved
1. The policy is if there is human life at risk, the department responds and rescues, but only fights the fire enough to effect the rescue
2. This person did not "forget" to pay. The fire department called him in August to tell him that they had not received his payment and he would not receive fire protection until he did
3. In an earlier interview, the guy said "I knew I didn't pay, but I thought they would come anyway". Now in interviews he says he forgot
4. Fire Service should be tax based, but in Tennessee, to put a new tax in place, like a fire protection district, requires a positive vote in favor of the tax. For 20 years, this County has regularly voted against such a tax.
5. The Community of South Fulton, who's fire department responded, is located in Kentucky. So not only do you have a city fire department responding out of their protection area, they are responding into another STATE.
Remember, they're not *his* firefighters, they're from the next town over. His nonexistent local government has no fire service: I bet it would have no objection if you wanted to buy yourself a tanker truck and set up your own private fire company.
But nobody does this, because fire protection is an absolutely shitty way to make a living in the 21st century. There's no profit in it unless you run around setting fires yourself.
Unprofitable but indispensable social services: this is what government is good at.
As others have pointed out, the fire department showed up to prevent the fire from spreading to the neighbor's property. The neighbor had paid the $75.
Bingo.
So instead of pointing at the big bad nasty firefighters, go point the finger at the "government is evil" crowd who insists that any tax is bad and that we would be better off living in a libertarian utopia.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
The only thing that tires me more than a frothing libertarian is a frothing libertarian hater, of which there seem to be more than actual libertarians.
If you knew anything about what the hell you were talking about you'd realize that libertarians aren't opposed to all government, just parts of it. As with any group of humans there's variance, some are quite moderate, some are more extreme. However you find that things like military and public safety, which fire departments are, are things they almost universally are ok with taxes paying for.
There's a big difference between saying "Reduce or eliminate many government programs," and saying "Eliminate ALL government." That would be anarchists, not libertarians.
Also please realize the people suggesting bill him mean "Bill him for the cost of putting out the fire." It would be a case of "Pay $75/year in insurance, or pay the full cost if there is a fire."
That is the proper way to handle a situation like this, since fire is a public safety issue. Not putting out a fire should never be an option since the problems isn't that a house may burn down, it is that all of them may burn down. Ask London what happens when you lack proper fire control.
"No, the real problem is with having a voluntary fee for a collective, necessary service. Don't blame the firefighters. Blame the government that set up a no-win situation."
I think you mean "Blame the voters who are so anti-tax that they refuse to provide the necessary funds to even cover collective, necessary services."
But emergency rooms are still required to treat the grievously injured, insured or not. What if there had been a life on the line, someone trapped inside the building. Does some kid have to die because his dad was to cheep or too stupid to pay a fee?
I understand why this happened this way but I don't see why it couldnt be structured differently. If wilderness rescue can charge a lost hiker for finding them without that hiker having to pay a $75 fee ahead of time just in case they get lost, why cant the fire department charge someone who didn't pay the fee up front. Obviously the fee for putting out the fire should be a lot more than what the person would pay if they just paid in advance but it should be an option.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
it can't if the fee for 'on the spot' payment is very low, but it could if the fee was high enough to keep the department running between fires. If the fire department takes 20K to run every month, and there's on average one fire a month, a non-subscription fee of 20K for putting out a fire without subscription would allow the fire department to run with a minimum initial investment, either by a private party or the government.
The problem here is that there was no procedure whatsoever to deal with a non-payer whose house can be saved. A form contract in the fire truck that the owner can sign to accept some kind of lien on the property to pay for the fire extinguishing costs plus a penalty would have saved the house, taught the homeowner a lesson and made the fire department richer.
You're ignoring the greater problem: socialised defense! The federal government is taking your money, and using it to protect poor people from terrorism.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
I've seen a lot on here about the unconscionable conduct of the fire department (and yes, they were douche-nozzles about the whole thing). What I haven't seen is commentary on why this guy's idiot grandson was burning rubbish in the first place. Use legitimate solid-waste disposal (landfill or, better yet, recycling) but don't burn the stuff! Not only can it cause property destruction, but it's also a health hazard if plastics are being burned and people happen to inhale the noxious fumes. Too bad this poor guy had to lose his home because his grandson is a fucktard.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
Yes, we get it, we all get it, the whole of Europe gets it. We KNOW that public services are paid for with taxes, we don't think they magically exist for free. The other thing is that we tend to pay our taxes up to the top, and then the top ensures that stuff like firefighting are paid-for nationwide. That also means that there isn't a jobsworth being employed to check whether homes currently being burnt down are covered. Frankly, this situation is stupid even for all the people who DO pay because time is wasted checking to see if they're on the list (and faffing around resolving mis-spellings, no-doubt) when the firefighters SHOULD be going to put out the fire immediately.
FGD 135
OSHA considers a house fire to be "Immediately Dangerous to Life and Health"
All my personal protective equipment comes with warning labels that even when wearing the equipment properly, I can still be killed in a fire that the equipment will survive.
Every time I enter a building that is on fire it counts as "substantial personal risk". I am definitely at less risk than someone without the training or equipment, but I am still at risk.
If I am injured on a fire that my department has no legal responsibility to respond to, the Workman Comp Insurance provider can deny my claims.
Unless there is a pre-written agreement between the County and my Community, responding to a non-subscribers house fire is an out of jurisdiction response. The Subscription fee is what gives my fire department jurisdiction.
Bad news: the scotus has already ruled that police can, in fact, legally stand by as you are raped. Even if they know about it. Even if you call for help.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia
Also:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
As a Brit, yes, I pay taxes, and if my house was on fire, a fire engine would come to put it out. And if the house of my friend who has a part-time job and pays less taxes was on fire, a fire engine would come to put it out. And if the house of my other friend who is on benefits (which you'd call "welfare") because this wretched economy means they can't get an interview much less a job, and as such doesn't pay taxes in any meaningful sense was on fire, a fire engine would come and put it out. And if the house of my other other friend, who has a debilitating illness which means she couldn't work if she wanted to and gets just enough money from the government to pay for the food, rent and carers she needs was on fire, a fire engine would come and put it out.
We have this crazy idea over here that a person's right to emergency services shouldn't be based on how much money they're making, and shouldn't be removed through poor luck or illness. And yeah, a few lazy people abuse it; frankly, I'll accept that knowing that if anyone I care about is in need, no matter whether due to malice, bad luck or their own stupidity, they'll be helped, without needing to sign up for a series of different plans years beforehand.
Libertarianism has the same flaws as communism: it doesn't really work--especially on a large scale---because actual people are involved, and people are not neat little Randian or Marxist entities but complex, real-world things. Arguing that "it's better" or "real libertarianism has never been tried" is exactly the same kind of self-delusional wankery that Marxists exercise.
You couldn't guarantee that "a libertarian would have put out the fire" because it's equally likely that a libertarian might buy the fire department and then go around starting fires in order to make money. Libertarians are people, too, and subject to the same nobility and failings as people everywhere.
This is why democratic socialism will win every single damn time: it's not perfect (far from it) but it's built assuming that people will be people, whereas know-it-all totalitarism or anarchism are divorced from how people actually act.
--srj/mmv
I live in the next town over, across the state line in KY, so allow me to expand on this a little.
The fire subscription fee has been in existence for 20 years for those living within a certain distance of South Fulton in Obion County. It has never gone up in 20 years. It is a meager fee for such service, yet a large portion of those eligible still gamble with it. Before 1990, the rural folks flat out didn't have fire service, period. South Fulton FD would not respond outside the city limits, so this is considered an expanded service for those outside the city limits, not a gov't paid and provided service like it is for those inside the city. And we use the term "city" liberally. South Fulton has a population of maybe 2500 people and falling as the old die off and the young leave for lack of employment opportunity.
Had there been a person in the home whose life was in danger, the firefighters would have been legally obligated to respond to save the person, but once the person is rescued, their duty ends for those without a fire subscription. Also, I don't understand why his pets died. From what I've been told, it took almost 2 hours for the fire to go from the burn barrels to his shed and ultimately to his house. He had lots of time to rescue his pets and his most important documents and possessions before the fire got to his house, but he instead assumed that the SFFD would come save his pets and property even though his fee was not paid. He expected something for nothing and got exactly what he put effort into - nothing.
As for the property next door, it was a harvested soybean field on fire, not another home. They have special tanker trucks with big spray booms to deal with such.