Victims of huge highway crashed being billed for fire dept. services

The BBQ Pit
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http://www.jsonline.com/news/OzWash/dec02/104953.asp

The town of Cedar Grove’s fire department was basically financially wiped by providing assistance at a horrible accident earlier in the year (which claimed the life of two of Qadgop the Mercotan’s neighbors and nearly involved his wife and child), so they’re sending bills for $500 to people involved - sometimes in the name of someone who died in the accident. Bills supposedly contained a small note suggesting that it be forwarded to the insurance company, but many people didn’t realize that any fire department ever charged, or that it had been such a financial toll.

Relevant quotes:

Also, many people are claiming that they didn’t receive any aid - no injuries, no damage to their vehicle - and are still being billed. The fire department’s response was to say that they should write back and dispute the charges.

I really, really sympathize with their situation. However, they needed to think this through a little better. This was a horrific crash, that deeply affected the communities in the area. To receive a bill around the holiday season with no real explanation other than that they can forward to their insurance if they wish is just cold.

And regarding this quote:

Those two that were in the same car were QtM’s neighbors. This means that his neighbor’s wife received a bill this holiday season, probably in the name of her deceased husband. I know the department worked hard and is required by law to make it up via this means before turning to the state for aid, but the lack of proper explanation made it a very Grinch-ly act. Write up a decent letter, even a form letter, explaining what the accident did to their budget, why they legally have to send out bills before being able to get help from the state, apologize for seeming cold. Sheesh.

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:smack: I previewed and everything, and I put a typo in the subject title?! /cry

(I blame my being stuck at work alone on Christmas Eve.)

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It’s actually not uncommon to receive a bill for EMS services after an accident; most insurance companies will pay them. It’s also not uncommon for a decedent to receive bills for past services rendered.

I’d suggest that either everyone forward the bill to their carrier, or refuse to pay it and allow the local fire department to collect from the state.

I know, it’s tacky as hell, but it’s part of the routine course of business.

Robin

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I know it’s typical (though some fire departments in that area were quoted in the linked article as saying they have never billed), but I just thought that their way of going about it lacked some tact and thought. This was a very traumatic experience for the region, and received national coverage. It was most likely the largest auto accident that Wisconsin has ever had, and occurring on a major highway during rush hour, it affected many families at least indirectly. I have a friend who commuted through there at that time, but happened to be late that day and so was saved from quite likely being involved in some way.

This is from a small town, and one where they weren’t accustomed to things like the fire department charging. A simple form letter explaining the economics of the situation and what to do about the bill would have gone a long ways towards smoothing things over. Instead, there are hurt and angry feelings from the families of deceased and injured people, as well as from those who didn’t need help - thankfully escaping any harm - but now feel like someone’s trying to rip them off.

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Mrs. MC$E was involved in an auto accident this summer, and we got a bill for over $700 from the state highways department. It was itemized, covering everything from the fuel for the trucks and overtime for the workers. I think I even ended up paying for a new shovel for the guys to lean on while the collected the overtime :mad:

Well, the bill was sent to the insurance company, so I guess everybody with my same insurance company bought a part of that new shovel.

I’m kind of surprised now that we didn’t get a bill from the fire dept too. We did get one from the hospital for a blood test that the police required her to take. I would have thought that if it was mandatory, the police would be footing the bill. If you get pulled over suspected of DWI, do they make you pay for the breathalyzer (even if it comes up under the limit?)

MC$E

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Proud member of a rural volunteer fire department speaking. Our operating budget is far far less than that mentioned for the deparment in question. $60,000.00 a year would be untold luxury for my department.

Rural volunteer fire departments billing for their services is the norm. A lot of people that move to our (rural) area from larger urban areas assume that their fire protection is paid for by their property taxes. I’m assuming on my part that in the larger urban areas that are covered by paid departments fire protection is indeed covered by property taxes, but in our protection district that is not the case, and homeowners need to make sure that their homeowners insurance will cover those costs in the event of a fire. In most cases, our department will submit the bill to the homeowner to pass on to the insurance company. Very seldom have we had an insurance company insist that we bill them directly, but it has happened.

In the case of a grass or wildland fire, which are under the protection of the Department of Natural Resources, our presence is considered mutual aid, no matter which agency is paged out first. Our costs are reimbursed (after submission of a bill) by the DNR, at the rates they set. So much per truck, per hour, from the time we are paged until we are released from the scene by the DNR.

Our volunteer department also runs a state registered EMS/Rescue Squad. All of us are EMT B’s, and we are all trained and certified in vehicle extrication. We are a non-transport unit, but we cover portions of three different ambulance districts. Two of them are county owned and operated, one is hospital owned. We are paged out for everything from falls, cardiac events, vehicle accidents, meth lab abatement and subsequent decontamination, and search and rescue. Reimbursement for these calls are never billed directly to the patient or accident victim, they are passed through to us by the county or hospital ambulance service that does the billing. Our amount of reimbursement for any call is $40.00, not by our choosing. Not a bad deal for the calls that are close to base and require very little in patient care. However, one three day search and rescue, multi vehicle accident with multiple traumas, or meth lab and we’ve lost money for the year. It’s also a common practice for the DNR to have us paged out by the county as medical standby during huge wildland fires. The last one was a huge fire (several hundred acres) the last three days of May 2002. The DNR does not reimburse for medical. We were on 24 hour standby for three days. There were no patients, so therefore no ambulance service for the billing. Our rig put on several hundred miles shuffling squads of firefighters in and out of the fireground. Our unit was not in service, any runs needing medical in our district during those three days were paged out to neighboring districts per our mutual aid agreements with them. That event cost us several hundred dollars, and our reimbursement was zero.

I’m in Minnesota. I’ve no idea whatsoever where we would turn to “get our money from the state” as was suggested above. As far as I know, there is no such money in existence in any government agency’s budget anywhere in Minnesota. If we found ourselves in the same situation as the department in question, I don’t know what we would do.

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IMHO Greg Navis could have sent an explanatory note, or even called a lot of these people personally to tell them why this was being done. It’s a small community, and most people are connected by family, work, and school ties. Big error to not let everyone know what was coming down.

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Exactly - maybe it’s because we’re so familiar with this town, QtM, that this seems so out of character for us.

(To reiterate, the title of my thread is not the point of my rant; obviously they have to be billed. The point is that people were not informed in a proper manner as to why they were receiving these bills, and many who did not use FD/EMT services are being billed as well.)

This town has a population of maybe 2000 people. It’s a very rural community, with many family farmers in the area. There are a few restaurants in town, one of which my elderly grandfather would ride his bicycle a few miles to from his farm to get a cup of coffee, and people would greet him by name. We’re talking small town Americana here. My mother grew up there, and I spent a lot of time there as a kid.

The majority of the people involved in the accident were from there or similar small towns in the area. What I would have expected is like QtM stated - if not phone calls from the chief or someone else explaining the situation, then at least a letter. An explanation of what hard times they’ve fallen on as a result of having to try to deal with this horrible accident (and what people should do with the bill, or if they think they were unfairly billed) would have been met with a lot of sympathy and the appropriate action, or some questions. Instead they got feelings of anger and pain, or outrage in the case of those improperly billed.

Maybe you have to know the area to understand it, I guess, or perhaps my resentment at being at work today has messed with my already-poor writing skills.

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I agree with both of you completely. I’m in the same situation. I can see the house I grew up in from where I live now. My house was owned by one of my elementary teachers. We used to terrorize her most of the summer with boquets of dandelions in exchange for cookies. My yard connects with the yard of the church I was baptised and married in. Most of my patients are, at the very least, acquaintences of mine. Some have been family, and some fellow department members. We can count on our patients being family or friends of someone on the squad on just about every call. Just this morning one of our members met a logging truck with a full load on a curve. The truck lost it’s load right in front of him, and he hit it head on. Fortunately Pat was belted in and his airbags had both deployed. Couple of cracked ribs from the shoulder belt is and an adrenaline hangover is all he suffered.

My guess is that the officers of the department have been debating long and hard about their financial situation since the day of the accident, and for whatever reason they decided that this was the best way to handle it. Given the length of time between the event and the billing, I’m almost positive that they’ve exhausted all other possibilities and that this is the last thing they ever wanted to do to keep the doors open and the trucks running for the next guy/fire/accident/tragedy. I agree that in a close small community things probably should have been handled a little differently… perhaps a few well publicised public meetings and some phone calls or something.

Just as an aside, as a government entity our department is required to hold monthly business meetings. The meetings are open to the public (not that anyone ever attends), must follow Robert’s Rules of Order, and minutes must be kept. Those minutes are also public record, excluding topics protected under Data Privacy. So if there is something about the situation that affects you as a taxpayer enough to be bothered, all discussions by the department regarding the matter should be available to you.

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I agree that more tact should have been used. I also think people don’t realize that fire departments can charge for services. It’s very common in wildland firefighting. I’ve worked for the Forest Service the last couple summers, and we frequently bill for fire suppression costs. When I worked in Arizona, some people from Flagstaff got a $3.1 million bill from the USFS.

As far as Minnesota goes, we’ve been reimbursed by the state for some responses. We got a check for assisting with a HazMat accident recently (the money came from fines, I believe).

St. Urho
EMT/Firefighter

[hijack] Where you from deej? I’m from the Duluth area. [/hijack]

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Sorry to continue the hijack…

I’m two counties and less than 40 miles south of you in northern Pine.

Were you on the Dr. B fire last May? Nickerson…ring any bells?

I’ll enable PM’s in my profile if you want to reply off the board.

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OK, so I won’t.

I did set it to show my email address, though.

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Was she intoxicated? What exactly happened here? Did she get drunk and drive around and cause an accident? Or did she just have a drink or two and then get caught up in an accident that was someone elses fault? Validate your rant. I’m curious.

In China, after they execute someone, they send the family a bill for the bullets. 'Course, if the condemned person was actually innocent, then it’s kind of unfair.

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[QUOTE
In China, after they execute someone, they send the family a bill for the bullets. 'Course, if the condemned person was actually innocent, then it’s kind of unfair. [QUOTE]

Do you have a citation for this? I find it hard to believe.

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Pardon the coding errors, but the question still stands.