According to this article, the firefighters showed up, but didn’t put out the fire because the owner didn’t pay the fire protection fee ($75) that year. However, they did save the neighbor’s field (he paid the fee).
Couple questions:
This thread is debating the issue. It seems to be legal, partly because the Cranick’s lived outside South Fulton, which is the fire department’s primary responsibility.
Didn’t Julius Caesar make his first packet using the same techniques?
It’s legal, as long as the firefighters do what’s necessary to save any human lives that may be in danger. They are not responsible for protecting property outside of their mandated jurisdiction.
Not sure how it works in that jurisdiction, but fire protection fees are generally set by the local government, not the fire department itself.
The context of this story is very strange for those of us who live in metro areas.
As strange as it sound to my own ears, the county where the Cranicks lived doesn’t have a fire department. The city nearby has a fire department paid by the city residents. The city has no public funding to respond to calls outside the city, but they do offer rural residents the options of paying a fee to be covered. Think of it like insurance.
This story is so odd to many of us because we take fire departments for granted. It just seems so foreign to live in a jurisdiction without one. In fact, I find it astonishing.
If the city put out every fire at a house they are not funded to protect they would be bankrupt.
As far as the legal question, IANAL but none of the articles on this even raise the question of the legality of the actions of the firemen responding, the fire department, or the city.
Why do they need to save human lives? So long as there is no good samaritan law or something like that, why do they have to do anything? I guess my question is, what makes it okay to allow the house to burn down, but not to let if burn down if someone might be hurt as a result.
Ok, why can’t the local government just set the fee at whatever they want since they know someone whose house is burning down will pretty much agree to anything.
Because most people in our society agree that we should go out of our way to help those in mortal danger. It’s the same reason why hospitals are required to treat and stabilize emergency patients even if they can’t pay.
There’s a point of diminishing returns. At some point a further-away city would be willing to offer fire protection service for cheaper. And there may be a state law or regulation that caps what they can charge.
It’s an annual fee, not paid when the house is burning down, and they do set it at what they want. They also said that they can’t operate on a pay-as-you-go model (I imagine that’s a cash flow nightmare).
The tragedy is that the homeowner “forgot to pay” (only he knows whether he really forgot, or was in reality “saving the $75 and taking his chances”), but this isn’t like forgetting to pay your electric bill.
Apparently, they did charge people after the fact as well. Even so, you are ignoring the crux of the argument. Say they set the annual fee at 5k per year. Most would/could not pay it. As a result, they may not be able to get insurance coverage, which would essentially mean they would either risk losing everything in the event of a fire, or they would have to find some way to pay the exorbitant fee.
Or, they could charge after the fact. What’s to stop them from just demanding a 100k to put a fire out? They could just put a lien on the property for an outrageous amount.
Most people also feel a fire company shouldn’t let your house burn down because you didn’t pay a nominal annual fee, and yet, that is exactly what happened. More importantly, how would a fire company arriving to the scene of a household that didn’t pay the fee even know if someone was in the house that needed to be saved? Luckily, the owners were there to communicate that to them, but what if they were out, or passed out in the bedroom due to smoke inhalation? How would they even know they had to put the fire out in order to save people?
But that point is much higher (in most circumstances) than the cost of putting out the fire. It could be as high as the value of one’s home, and all their possessions inside. Not to mention the sentimental value of those things. Someone whose house is worth 250k, and whose possessions are worth another 50k would likely be willing to pay a large portion of that amount to prevent them both from being burned up. Yes, competition would help, but that doesn’t necessarily ensure reasonable prices.
This sort of thing is where tax revolts eventually lead. Even having fire departments is an example of pure socialism. People get together to socialize their needs. I don’t see how, in principle, this differs from not getting health treatment because you can’t afford the cost.
Incidentally, I seem to remember reading that in the early days of the republic, there were no municipal fire departments. There were insurance companies selling fire insurance. To protect their investments, they built fire brigades that protected houses belonging to their subscribers and no one else. Finally, most municipalities socialized fire fighting. Presumably Libertarians would abolish them and return to private insurance.
ianal or a geographer or anything beyond a chair moistener.
in the USA cities or villages will offer fire protection with their own department. a county or town (often a square with 6 miles on a side) can vote to establish fire protection for rural areas and charge a tax to everyone. a less expensive method is to pay adjoining towns (that do have protection) a fee to protect your town as well, this is paid for with a tax on everyone to the provided areas. this home owner’s county and town decided not to do either. this home owner was lucky enough to live near a government entity that offered protection to individuals on a fee basis. lucky but foolish.
it also seems that the forget to pay isn’t an issue. the fire department mailed and called all eligible people about enrolling and renewing, multiple offers would have been declined.
You may be thinking of his triumvirate colleague Crassus who earned his famous wealth doing just that. In fact he went further and would only put out the burning property if the owners agreed to sell it to him at, well, fire-sale prices.
According to legend, his money-grabbing ways were so well know that, after he was captured, the Persians put him to death by pouring molten silver down his throat.
This is how the protection racket works. If you don’t pay…you don’t get protected. 
As I remember, something like these private fire brigades was portrayed in the movie Gangs of New York.
your house had a ‘fire mark’ on it and all insurance fire companies went to the scene and only the subscriber company acted.
later even after government fire departments started they did firefighting for life saving. separate ‘savage companies’ would remove or protect the contents to minimize the insurance loss.
“Moistener”?
It’s also strange for those of us who live in rural counties served by volunteer fire companies.
In this case the fee was $75 a year, and they explicitly state they don’t allow you to pay-as-you-go (pay-as-you-burn?). Their reason for not allowing you to pay the fee when your place is already on fire is sound: no-one would pay the fee annually, only once their house was on fire. I assume that there is nothing stopping them from asking for $100k on the spot, given that there is nothing stopping them from simply letting the place burn.
Remember, this fire department was not for this area, they were for a nearby town. I don’t see why they would be responsible for fire fighting in this rural area. It would kind of be like saying that you are responsible, and should have traveled here and helped put out the fire if you had heard about it. Personally, I think it is bad policy for the rural area to have no fire coverage - I would have voted for taxes to cover either an actual fire department or contracting out to the town to provide coverage for the entire area. In the end they chose not to. It is not fair to expect the town’s taxpayers to pay for fire coverage for other areas that have explicitly decided not to pay taxes for this coverage.
Again, if there is anyone at fault here it is the rural county voters who decided they didn’t want to pay taxes for fire coverage. I don’t see why it is fair for people of area A to say “hey guys, we don’t have to pay taxes for fire coverage, people in area B are so they’ll have a fire department that’ll just come over!”
Seriously?
Human lives are worth more than property. There’s a moral obligation to save human lives where possible.
Evidently, most people don’t feel that way. At least not in that county of Tennessee.