No Monty I read the thread, and I understand what has happened. However the phrase two wrongs don’t make a right comes to mind. How do you stand there in a position to help someone and just watch their life burn? Its disgusting.
Olbermann interviewed this man last night. If you don’t live in the area its kind of a shell shock. My anger comes from how we treat each other. Just do the right thing, and we would all be better off.
I agree this makes things far more difficult to deal with. After reading through the GD thread, I understand the FD decision, especially if the story told about another fire incident happening previously, which he was let off the hook for, is true.
I agree most with the posters who were saying that the system is what is really at fault because everyone involved more or less acted rationally. If we can’t live in a perfect world where those who don’t pay the fee shoulder the full cost, then I suppose the next best thing is mandatory insurance / tax. But I maintain it is always inappropriate to deny firefighting services.
with the grim knowledge that the residents of the county had several years earlier voted against paying for blanket coverage of rural homes, and that Crannick had repeatedly directly turned down opportunities to pay the $75, despite having had a fire in his house set by the same idiot son three years earlier during which he was given a free pass.
Crannick lied his ass off to Olbermann. He told O that he forgot to pay the fee, when he told local reporters immediately after the fire “I thought they’d come out and put it out, even if you hadn’t paid your $75, but I was wrong.” He said his pets burnt to death in the house, but he somehow forgot to mention that to local reporters, or that he’d had a couple hours between the start of the fire and the house catching on fire to, you know, open the door and let them out.
Crannick just didn’t want to pay for fire coverage. He was a cheapskate. He knew fire was a real risk. He knew all he had to pay was $75, which he was more than able to pay. He just wouldn’t.
It’s not cause for joy that his house burnt down. But it’s not cause for pillorying the fire department either. They need money to pay to keep the decrepit engines they have running, to maintain the building, and to train.
You want to blame someone for Crannick’s house burning down? Blame the myopic citizens of Fulton County who won’t authorize a $0.13/year increase in their property taxes to get proper fire coverage where a fireman doesn’t have to watch someone’s house turn to charcoal.
Then why should anyone ever pay for firefighters?
Because they don’t have a choice. This would come about either through mandatory insurance / taxes or legal means to recoup costs if the person is reckless and chooses to forgo the insurance.
Basically, I’m taking the position that it is in everybody’s best interest that all fires are extinguished promptly and so the system is built around doing this. Finding an efficient and fair way to pay for it is the secondary concern.
I’m not seeing anything to support that the fire department came out and and checked to see if anyone was in danger. They did not come out until the neighbor called later.
Well, it might be even better to pay them in advance to not burn down your house. Jus’ sayin’.
I haven’t seen anyone commenting on this story anywhere say that a mandatory scheme isn’t better for both moral and practical reasons. I totally agree.
However, you have here a case where a group of people very consciously refused to participate in a mandatory scheme, and many opted out of a voluntary scheme. Due to the intricacies of municipal/county politics, it’s impossible for force them to pay if they don’t volunteer it. Spending your very limited resources on them means fewer resources for paying customers–and this is not an academic point. There’s no fire hydrant at Crannick’s–they had what water they brought with them in an old truck. Would it be appropriate for the paying customer’s house next door to suffer damage because the water they brought was spent on Crannick’s house?
Seriously, what do you do in that situation?
“Would it be appropriate for the paying customer’s house next door to suffer damage because the water they brought was spent on Crannick’s house?”
No, and it wouldn’t be any more appropriate then what actually happened. These are Fire Fighters who watched a home burn to the ground because he wasn’t on “the list”. I can’t wait till my job goes this way so I can standby and do nothing for 90% of my 911 calls.
“Sir I’m afraid you are just going to have to bleed to death please try not to get any on my shoes, I have to save my trauma dressing for that guy over there who isn’t injured yet but can afford it and already paid for it!”
Yeah, as I said in my second post here, everyone acted more or less rationally, meaning the fire department had an appropriate response given their situation. I thought you were taking issue with the idea that firefighting should be a given.
Hansel, Fire Fighting, Police, and EMS should be mandatory. The whole situation is unfortunate and now, hopefully it won’t happen again. I couldn’t even type that with a straight face 
Are there any Fire Fighters in this thread? Maye I’m drawing the wrong parallels to my job but it’s hard not too.
So the FD is damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t.
Why are you pissed off at them? They were stuck between a rock and hard place, and it was Crannick who put them there by repeatedly refusing to contribute to their upkeep, and endangering their continued ability to do their job. Why aren’t the Crannicks of the world the target of your anger? Imagine being in a position where you’re answering 911 calls and you can’t send the fire department to a non-subscribers house because the department is going broke covering the deadbeats who think they deserve fire protection for free?
I agree 100%.
I think as a general proposition, I totally agree with that. But a situation like this one was constructed by the Crannicks of the world, and I do not feel bad for them when they suffer for making the world they want it to be.
According to the article, the homeowner offered to pay all firefighting expenses when he made the emergency call. Assuming he was sincere and had the means, what good reason was there for the fire department to refuse to save his home?
I have some other questions about this arrangement: What if someone is renting a house and the landlord hasn’t paid the fire protection fee? What if someone has been paying the fee, but is a couple of weeks late with the current payment? What if the fire department decided they had to put out a fire in an uninsured house to protect an insured house - would they bill the uninsured homeowner, or just chalk it up to the cost of protecting the insured homeowner? What if there are people in the building who need to be rescued?
The article also said that the fire department didn’t respond until they got a call from a neighbor who had paid the fee. (friedo, you claim that they responded to the first call, but I don’t see this in any of the news stories - cite?) This neighbor was asking for protection for his own home, which the fire department provided. What if this neighbor hadn’t been home? Would his house have caught fire (and possibly burned down) because the fire department refused to respond to a 911 call from a non-payer?
There are so many problems that can arise when an emergency service is paid for by opt-in subscription. I really think taxes are a better way to fund this.
The municipality collects in less than 50% of the cases where they service an unsubscribed county resident. They’re $30k in the hole servicing those people, and that’s a huge hit for a fire department supported by a city of 10k. So when someone frantically calls up and says “I’ll pay anything!”, they have a wealth of experience telling them not to believe the caller.
The FD/municipality has no means at all to coerce payment. The county residents are outside their jurisdiction, so they can’t add it to their property taxes or put a lien on their house. The county won’t help them because the county can’t enforce municipal bylaws. Suing someone whose house was on fire isn’t going to get the money without racking up more costs than they’d get back, if they could even get the money. Suing the county for compensation would just start a war with a superior entity. If the non-subscriber doesn’t pay up, they’re screwed, and history shows they don’t usually pay up.
They should have extinguished the fire, but afterwards, asked for the $75 fee increased five-fold.
Something I don’t quite understand is how firemen can let something burn down without their instinct urging them to put it out.
I’m pissed off because they were there, equipment and all and watched it burn. 75 dollars wouldn’t of even covered the actual cost of the incident. The “Crannicks of the world” are never going to go away. What about the people who legitimately can’t afford it?
This whole situation is beyond me as I live in an area that is not like this. Still it boils down to people with the ability to help chose not too. Could you really watch someone’s house burn down and do nothing with a fire truck next you? Wonder what that feels like.
There was actually an interesting discussion at Volokh’s blog on this, about whether or not it would count as a legitimate contract for the 911 dispatcher to accept Crannick’s promise to “pay anything”. Consensus was that, legally, there would be no enforceable contract there.