Your opinion, however I have been IN the EXACT same situation AS a firefighter who responded with a crew to a home that did not “contract” with the department I was working for at the time because they were in an unincorporated area. Know what I and the rest of our crew did? Put out the fucking fire.
The way the world works on paper, you snotty little fuck-dripping and the way it works in REAL LIFE are two different things. I know how things are SUPPOSED to work, and I’d say after 20 years in the business, a damn site better than YOU do.
Sometimes, you do what you need to do and sort out the details later, this was one of those times. The ironic part is that these guys, on passing the home in their personal cars, probably would have stopped to help.
It’s a horrible system, and these are the consequences, but I maintain they had a duty to act and they failed to do so. Bottom line.
Some people are still missing something. “Mutual aid” responses mean that the locality with the fire already has a fire department. The fire at issue in this thread is one in which the locality (unincorporated area) decided to not have their own fire department. This isn’t mutual aid. It’s providing a fee-based service outside of one’s employing locality to those who, get this, paid the service fee.
Unless, of course, the law governing their employment and that of the fire equipment differentiates between private persons (them driving in their personal vehicles on their off-time) and them on-duty as firefighters employed by a different government locality than the one in which the fire occurred.
How’s that for a bottom line?
By the way, what do you think about a rural area which advises its residents that if there are no people in the structure and the bush (bushes, trees, etc.) is not trimmed a certain distance away from the structure, then the structure is placed on a “do not defend” list?
Seems like a good system. They get to feel smarter than those dumb city folk, they feel good by not being forced to pay evil taxes towards fire protection, and they get to feel morally righteous as one of the freeloaders is punished on a national stage. That’s a triple win right there.
Does the fact that this was the second fire at this property since the voluntary subscription service went in, and the homeowner refused to pay the subscription after the first fire? Or how about the fact that the city is losing money on this service because they have been fighting fires for freeloaders.
If the fire fighters do what you suggest, the city will have to make a hard choice: either stop the service in unincorporated areas or raise taxes on the city residents to cover the shortfall. Which should they do? Or do you think they fire fighters are duty bound to work without pay and buy their own equipment?
No kidding. Next time someone complains that conservatives lack compasion, I’ll link to this thread as a counter-point. I’m shocked that anyone, no less this number of people, think that someone forgetting to pay a fee - the article I read said he claimed that he thought he’d paid - should result in someone losing their home when the firefighters were right there. If they’d put out the fire and sued him for the associated costs, I’d be okay with that, but not watching it burn to the ground.
Of course, I’m also shocked that they don’t have paid or volunteer firefighters in their own town, too, and actually voted it down. I don’t enjoy paying taxes, but if there isn’t a sucessful volunteer FF/EMT staff (there is in my town, and they’re far more busy with ambulance services than fire given there are only 3,000 or so homes) then of course it’s important to pay a tax for it. Fire isn’t something you just hope doesn’t strike a town, which is apparently what they were doing prior to this subscription service.
I want to live in a society where politicians that advocate raising taxes don’t get automatic howls of protest and the voters kicking them out of town. I want to live in a society where these taxes provide for the common good, for things like roads and schools and police and fire protection, and where idiot fuckhead residents don’t balk at an extra goddamned 13 cents a year in taxes so that they won’t do something stupid/risky like forget twice to pay their fire coverage.
Freeloader?! Seriously?! People are free loaders because they expect their government to hold society together and put out a fucking fire? I suppose he was a freeloader because police protected him from getting robbed and raped and total lazy ass because the military is keeping foreign nations from invading his front yard.
The system in that county was completely retarded and instead of being a decent human and acknowledge it was stupid and this guy got screwed, you back the system and blame the guy whose life is in ashes because he didn’t pay a fee he should have never been asked to pay in the first place.
So, in other words, you are saying the following: “I, Quimby, know how these people should run their lives better than they do. They are a bunch of idiots who shouldn’t be allowed to make agreements and construct procedures to solve their own problems.”
Care to subject your own life to this same scrutiny? I’d bet we could find some things you are doing wrong and tell you how to do them better.
His government does not offer fire-protection services. Some town down the highway does. In the same way, the city police is not obligated to come and investigate a crime at his place.
The system has been in place for about 20 years. And at least three other houses have burned down recently, and one barn full of horses.
I think this situation gets more notice because the neighbour paid his subscription fee, so the FD was there to protect that guy’s house, leaving the other to burn.
Give me a break. Clearly the system they have is fucking stupid. A guy’s house burned down while people trained to put out fires watched. Anyway you slice it that is stupid. So let me join you on your high horse and say yes, obviously any idea I present is better than their current system because their current system failed.
Lets have a sliding scale. Smokers pay more. People who smoke a lot pay a lot more. People with fireplaces pay more. Guys who work in their garages, pay a premium. Live next to a house that does not pay, you have to pay more. You have a big house, pay a lot more. If you have a big family, you have to pay up, more chance for an accident. If the police catch you smoking weed, you pay more. If you get busted for drugs, you have to pay more.
Your analogy fails because while cops in the next town over wouldn’t investigate a crime at his place, presumably there is some sort of police that do so he would call them instead.
I am all for personal responsibility but there is also such a thing as a Society and I would expect someone coming to your house to put out a fire is something that Society should provide.
We had privatized Fire Departments in the late 1800s and even then they realized it was bad idea. The concept that government provides services, believe it or not, is not necessary Communism. Government can and should do things. And one of those things should be putting out fires. It boggles my mind I have to even argue this.
I’m not convinced the system “failed.” I went to the casino, put $50 on red, and lost. Did the system fail?
Cranick gambled and lost, seems like the system worked perfectly.
Maybe the problem all comes down to the weird attachment Americans have to their homes. It’s not like the guy isn’t comfortably napping in his trailer as we speak.
As I said in the other thread, I have the choice to get a $7 protection plan for my phone. If I choose not to get it, I have no one to blame but myself. The cost of a new phone will be on me and not Best Buy.
Cranick didn’t care about his house, so I’m not sure why people on the internet do. It just so happened in this case it was a fire (which he started). What if $75 would have fixed a leak in his roof, but he CHOOSES to ignore it. Time goes buy his house is ruined. What if it was a $75 crack in his foundation that he ignores? $75 worth of faulty wiring or a leaking pipe.
There are dozens of ways in which this guy could have lost his house, all the result of his own negligence, it just happened to be a fire.
Think about all the people right now that don’t have working smoke detectors. How much does a 9V batter cost?
If a person doesn’t care about their own home, why should any one else?
A couple things I’ve been thinking about while reading various discussions of this story.
First, as bad as I feel for this guy, I think we all have to live with our choices in life. He didn’t pay the bill, so that was one choice. Bigger than that, though, he chose to live in a place with this type of fire protection. There are many, many, many places in the US of A where taxes pay for the fire district, including the municipality he lives adjacent to. He could live in one of those places, or he could live in an unincorporated county and pay the fee. For all I know, he chose it deliberately cause the taxes are lower and he wants to pick and choose what he’s going to pay for. If you’re going to do that, you better think long and hard about what risk you’re willing to take before you decide not to pay the bill.
Second, what if he had taken out an insurance policy on the house that cost $75 a year, and didn’t pay last year so the policy lapsed. Now his house has burned down…would anyone expect the insurance company to pay, despite the lapsed policy?
It is rural America. I have witnessed this same situation happen thirty miles outside of Spokane WA. I have seen villages and communities in Alaska that have no cops, no fire services and no EMS. I guess you feel they should all be forcibly relocated to Seattle. This fire department did the nice thing to offer its services to a group of individuals who otherwise wouldn’t have services. Some paid, some didn’t, get over it.
You all make the assumption that the fire department could have put out the house fire. That’s an assumption. There are no hydrants in the front of his house, again, its rural America. A house is on fire, you can use tens of thousands of gallons of water putting out that fire. On the other hand you can use very little water putting out the small brush fires that burning house causes and save the house that has paid for your services. A single hose and nozzle can spray 200 gallons per minute, a fire engine usually holds 800 to a 1000 gallons, four to five minutes worth of water. A water tender has about 2000 gallons, ten minutes worth of water. Once they are empty they have to drive back to a water source fill up and return. The Incident Commander has to factor all those variables, for the safety of the firefighters, for the budget, and for the houses that have paid to be protected.
The worst part about this whole situation in the stupid ass homeowner who gives all people living in rural America a bad name. Hey asshat for hundreds of years people in rural communities have not had fire service provided by the government, in most cases they joined together with their neighbors and gave their time and resources to make volunteer fire departments. Here are your options; (1)move to the city, pay your taxes and start sucking at the tit (2) start a volunteer fire department (3) pay for the services offered (4) you are not special, do what everyone else in your shoes has done and deal with it.
