Again, what the firefighters did here was not illegal, nor immoral.
First - they responded to the call. They make it clear that they only stopped fighting the fire (or declined to fight the fire) once it was clear that no person was at risk.
Second - the homeowner, in this case, had elected (for reasons that seemed good to him at the time) to avoid paying his subscription fees. Like Lissa and others have said it’s something I can’t believe the homeowner was actually in ignorance of… mortgage, fire insurance, and title insurace companies all would have a vested interest in making sure that the homeowner was aware of the costs, and that the homeowner was keeping such dues paid.
Third - the costs of a fire department are staggering. Maintenance on the equipment is always going on. The capital equipment is hugely expensive (I think small pumper trucks go for around a million dollars apiece, and even a small volonteer or on-call dept. will usually have two of those, at least.) even when it last twenty years, it’s not going to last forever. Personnel and fuel costs aren’t the only things to be figured in, after all.
Finally, all fire companies are paid for through some form or another. The urban/metropolitan model of the professional fire department, with personnel in the fire house at all times, that most people assume is the norm, is the more recent innovation. There, instead of volontary dues to the fire company, the dues are actually subsumed in the local taxes that are taken willinilli from homeowners, or taxpayers. In NYC, forex, there’s a municipal income tax as well as state and federal. Some of that money is used to fund the fire companies, and police and other aspects of the city government. So, the dues can be assumed to have been paid for any person who might require their services. With these relict companies that still collect their dues themselves, they do have a reasonable concern about the possibility of losing routine revenue for every case where the act beyond the mandate to protect life and the property of dues-paying community members. Remember, what keeps such companies working is that most homeowners think that paying a fraction of their house’s value each year is worth it for the protection offered by the firecompany. If they go, instead, to a “Pay as you need us” model, the cost per house fire put out (including capital costs, here) would be on the order of $100,000 a fire, I’d imagine. They’d suddenly have to be able to fund each year’s budget through such charges, and I’m sure that they would be impossibly high. (I am admittedly making that number up as I go, but I think it’s pretty fair, really. Even underestimating the fire company’s operational cost per house fire put out. Here in the moderate sized city I live in there’s maybe one house fire a week that I see in the newspapers. Now those aren’t the only calls that the fire department responds to, but they are among the more wearing calls on personnel and equipment.)
I really do think that this is a case of a homeowner making a penny-wise pound foolish decision, and getting bitten by it. Just as I generally feel about homeowners who do without flood insurance, or car owners who keep putting off preventive maintenance until something breaks.
BTW, Joey P, your extortion analogy doesn’t fit. If the firemen had set the fire, it would. As is, no.