…good lord. With all due respect to our American posters here, this situation sounds absolutely nuts. Is their any liability on the Fire Department if they hadn’t promoted the pay to fight fire poilcy? What about the person who sold Rueda the property? If Reuda had been inside the gararge at the time, would the Fire Department have attempted a rescue?
If Reuda had paid his bill, would this discussion be open?
…if you can provide proof that Reuda knew that he had to pay the bill, would this discussion be open?
From articles I’ve read, the department would have fought the fire if Rueda’s life was at risk. Really, the department is in an untenable situation- if they don’t fight the fire, there’s a huge amount of bad PR. If they do fight the fire, they remove the incentive for anyone else to pay and bankrupt themselves in the long run.
I think the real answer is that firefighting should be a government responsibility, like law enforcement.
What you’re not realizing is that in many rural areas of the United States there really is not much of a government infrastucture.
For example my grandmother lives in a very small community, population is around 1500. There’s no city government that I’m aware of, the town is not incorporated.
What this in effect means is that there is no city government to speak of, no authority or body that collects taxes. It has an address with the U.S. Postal Service, a zip code, and a sign telling you that you’ve entered this town, which is an unincorporated area.
Unincorporated area governance typically falls to a higher authority in the region, typically county government. However county governments themselves are often extremely primitive in heavily rural counties, and may not have the sort of power or infrastructure to provide fire departments to all the unincorporated areas under the county government’s authority.
Not future - but the past, I’ve first heard of this back in the 80’s, and remember this is a common practice in rural communities.
I find it hard to believe that in a year and a half, no one ever mentioned it to him. He never overheard a co-worker bitching about the fire subscription bill? He never noticed his taxes (and bond issues up for ballot) didn’t include fire levys? He never read the paper?
When I got my mortgage, I had to prove that I had insurance, and to get said insurance, my insurer insisted that the house be checked for unsafe wiring, which, if not repaired, would cancel my coverage. I have a hard time believing that his insurance company would not have had said something about his fire coverage. Secondly, it seems unlikely that the bank in that town, who has a vested interest in the matter, wouldn’t at least inform him that his home was in an area with subscription fire service.
Lastly, I also find it hard to believe that the fire station wouldn’t have solicited for his business. I would bet that they actually sent bills to his house. I flat-out don’t buy his claim he didn’t know. If he’d only lived there for a month or two, I might believe it.
…so no proof huh? The Fire Chief conceeds there are community members who don’t know about or don’t understand the membership policy.
Your specualation is lovely, and I know that it can be hard believing that people sometimes have different experiences to yourself, but it hardly fits the definition of proof.
If he has a mortgage and his mortgage company has a policy on this, then of course he would have known. It would have been obvious when he was denied a mortgage. If it occurred to anyone to ask if there was fire protection in his area, he would have been required to present proof of it before being able to get the loan. The Fire Department did not say he was aformer member. They said he was never a member.
They were absolutely right in not having an on-the-spot membership policy. That goes beyond duress, into blackmail territory. Besides, how likely are you to bring your checkbook when you’re fleeing your burning home?
I wonder if there are Good Samaritan laws in Missouri? The fact that rescuing a person trapped in a fire is optional for the Fire Department is a little disgusting.
I wonder if they put the fire out at a Church, regardless of the fee.
…maybe he never got a mortgage? Reuda claims he didn’t know, the Fire Chief never claims otherwise. Without any further evidence the point is conceeded.
There was a similar setup in ancient Rome — privately financed fire fighting companies, but with all kinds of skullduggery.
A company, for example, would start a fire, then charge the homeowner to put it out.
They’d even sabotage other companies’ fire trucks to stop them from arriving at the scene and thus get to the fire first to claim the fee.
This is some of what my daughter’s Latin teacher told her about firefighting in the time of the Romans.
This many posts and nobody has mentioned Terry Pratchett?
Something to the effect of “the citizens of Ankh Morpork quickly realised the folly of paying a group of men based on the number of fires they put out”
It’s been mentioned several times that the man was in no danger.
I’m with the firefighters on this one for exactly the reasons St. Urho mentioned. What if the amount of cancellations from people realizing that they can get the service for free results in bankruptcy? Then no one even gets the option of paying for protection.
If that (bolded) is true, and the guy really did offer to pay at the time, then I can see no excuse for the firefighters standing by and doing nothing. What on earth is to stop them from saving his house and then sending him the bill for the amount that the callout actually cost - which will clearly be many orders of magnitude higher than the subscription would have been?
This is basically the model that the Ambulance service (here) works on - you need an ambulance, you get it, no questions, no arguments, no cost … IF you’re an Ambulance Subscriber otherwise, sorry, that was a $600 taxi ride. I haven’t noticed them going broke recently.
Count me with those thinking there’s clearly something more going on here … my personal suspicion is he DID know about it and chose to take the risk anyway, and this pissed off the firemen enough that they CHOSE not to save his property, knowing that the rules were set up so this was technically allowable. Legally, presumably ok - morally bankrupt
Uh, I live in a rural area, and I’m unsure enough that this story is making me want to call up the county and ask if I have to pay anyone.
I know my insurance is much higher then a place in the 'burbs, largely because the nearest fire hydrant is many miles away.
It also said that the firefighters were under no obligation to rescue someone in a burning house.
From the linked article:
Its embarrasing and barbaric that this still happens in this country. Precisely the reason I will never vote libertarian.
What ever happened to voluteer fire departments that did this sort of thing to help their neighbors?
Pretty much all of those other volunteer fire departments are funded by taxes in one way or another. While the firefighters volunteer, there are still expenses for insurance, equipment, fuel, communications, a station, fire apparatus, etc.