No pay, no spray: Firefighters let home burn

[Asher]

And if he'd called up the firehouse of Othertown Tenn, would they have been obligated to leave their post and come to rescue his sorry-ass house?

Nope.

The firefighters of South Fulton are only there, with all their equipment BECAUSE the good people of South Fulton have paid for all their equipment, for the privilege of having firefighters on guard, etc. Those firefighters have no moral right to use any of those things for the benefit of somebody who is trying to sponge off of those expenditures.

You're mischaracterizing. The firefighters stationed in South Fulton were there because:
1) The rural premiums obviously pay a huge chunk of their budget, given the tiny size of the town
2) They LEGALLY had to fight the brush fires outside of the man's property line, premium or not
3) They had to respond to the fire spreading to the neighbour's house, who did pay the premium

They, in fact, did not even leave until the fire was spreading to areas they were legally obligated to protect. The equipment was not, presumably, paid for exclusively by "the good people of South Fulton". I do not see how a poor town can fund a full 24/7 firehouse when their population is 2500. The rural area, over ten times its size as you gleefully pointed out, probably pays a huge chunk of the budget.

[KrazyHorse]

If it's such a big problem, the obvious solution would be to refuse service to the county unless they instituted a county-wide levy to pay for the service.

I'm fine with the city not servicing the county AT ALL...because then the county can make other arrangements (volunteer firehalls, etc). My problem is with the men who sat and watched the house burn and did nothing. People should be better than that.

So you think that the firefighters should take action which may well lead to the city refusing to provide service to even those county residents who pay them? I don't understand that reasoning. It is a divorcing of long-term consequences from short-term moral judgment. That is an incoherent philosophy, from my point of view. The same can be said of a man who refuses to drop bombs on enemy soldiers while his country wages a just war.

FWIW, something tells me a town of ~1100 people can't sustain a full-time, paid firehall as it is anyway. They probably rely on the premiums from the rural county to pay for much of their costs just to service the city. It's not a case of a generous city reluctantly agreeing to service the rural county.

a) South Fulton has 2500 people in it
b) The relative size of the county and city is something I brought up above, and is precisely WHY it is so important to have credible consequences to not paying your bills...

[Asher]

So you think that the firefighters should take action which may well lead to the city refusing to provide service to even those county residents who pay them?

I don't think the city CAN refuse to provide service to paying residents.

Going forward, if they decide to change their mind in providing the service, they cannot accept the premiums. That's their call. They have no moral obligation to put out fires outside of their jurisdiction. In this case, the rural area can make their own arrangements (eg, volunteer firehalls).

My moral beef is with the individual men who watched a fire instead of doing something about it. If they'd acted, not only would the family's house be saved, but the paying neighbour's house would not have been damaged at all. Their actions were immoral and irresponsible.

[KrazyHorse]

1) The rural premiums obviously pay a huge chunk of their budget, given the tiny size of the town

And the city firehall therefore has an obligation to serve its rural customers, of which this gentleman is not one

2) They LEGALLY had to fight the brush fires outside of the man's property line, premium or not

I didn't see that (?). I saw the part where they sprayed around his property to stop the fire from spreading to his neighbor, who WAS a customer. (Customer service )

[KrazyHorse]

I don't think the city CAN refuse to provide service to paying residents.

Mispost. Meant to say "who can and would pay them"

[Asher]

1) The rural premiums obviously pay a huge chunk of their budget, given the tiny size of the town

And the city firehall therefore has an obligation to serve its rural customers, of which this gentleman is not one

2) They LEGALLY had to fight the brush fires outside of the man's property line, premium or not

I didn't see that (?). I saw the part where they sprayed around his property to stop the fire from spreading to his neighbor, who WAS a customer. (Customer service )

http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/southeast/2010/10/05/113824.htm#ixzz11YDD1vr0

The firemen only acted after the Cranicks' fire spread to an adjacent field. They are required to respond to brush fires, according to Simmons. But that did not help the Cranicks.

"It [the Cranicks' home] could have been saved, no doubt," said Simmons.

It bothers me that they're required to respond to brush fires in the rural area, but not to home fires...

[KrazyHorse]

Still don't see any problem with anybody's actions here except:

1) County residents, who obviously don't care about their own neighbors and who can't figure out why you don't want other people's houses burning arund yours
2) Idiot grandson
3) Whiny ***** homeowner

[KrazyHorse]

http://www.insurancejournal.com/news...#ixzz11YDD1vr0

The firemen only acted after the Cranicks' fire spread to an adjacent field. They are required to respond to brush fires, according to Simmons. But that did not help the Cranicks.

"It [the Cranicks' home] could have been saved, no doubt," said Simmons.

County probably pays them for brush fires. County obviously values brush more than the homes of its own residents.

[KrazyHorse]

Asher, if you're making the statement that long-term consequences of actions don't count then I think we're done here.

If you think they do count, then I don't understand what you're arguing; the city fire department can only exist and provide service to the county if it gets the premia paid by county residents. Therefore, it must be more expensive for county residents to NOT purchase insurance than it is for them to purchase insurance. Therefore, we need to have examples like this pour encourager les autres.

[Asher]

Asher, if you're making the statement that long-term consequences of actions don't count then I think we're done here.

If you think they do count, then I don't understand what you're arguing; the city fire department can only exist and provide service to the county if it gets the premia paid by county residents. Therefore, it must be more expensive for county residents to NOT purchase insurance than it is for them to purchase insurance. Therefore, we need to have examples like this pour encourager les autres.

I obviously think they do count.

But I disagree that we need to kill a family's pets and burn down the home to make a point.

The reasonable thing to do is to save his home, then change the structure of the deal. Either make the county go whole-hog (via levy) or none at all (use volunteer firehouses), or work out in some kind of legislation the cost of future visits by the fire department when a home is not protected by the premium. Make the cost high enough to act as a deterrent. The publicity of the event would pretty much ensure more uptake in the premiums.

I think it's patently absurd for a home to burn down without intervention within an area serviced by a fully equipped fire department. This is not the third world.

[KrazyHorse]

By the way, one of the costs that nobody's bothered to mention yet is the risk that firefighters run every time they walk into a burning building, or even approach one.

If they had fought this fire and one or more of those men had died, would this douchetard who couldn't even find 75$ to pay for fire protection have been able to compensate the firemen's families for their losses?

Firefighting, just like auto liability, has a lot of tail risk in it.

This guy refused to insure against all that tail risk by paying a mere 75$ a year.

**** his house.

[KrazyHorse]

The reasonable thing to do is to save his home, then change the structure of the deal. Either make the county go whole-hog (via levy) or none at all (use volunteer firehouses), or work out in some kind of legislation the cost of future visits by the fire department when a home is not protected by the premium. Make the cost high enough to act as a deterrent. The publicity of the event would pretty much ensure more uptake in the premiums.

Look, nobody's arguing that the county has chosen a GOOD SYSTEM by not providing universal fire protection, but that is a failing of the county. The city and the city firefighters have to act given that situation, and can't merely wish that the county would impose taxes or fines or whatever else.

The county is not going to be able to impose ex post legal fines, by the way. That's not how the law works.

[Asher]

Moral people need not always act by the letter of the law. I'd "steal from my employer" by taking time to help someone in distress. That's the kind of guy I am.

I think these firefighters should have saved the home and the pets, then used the situation to change the system so it can't happen again.

The fines I'm talking about would be going forward, not for the current case.

[KrazyHorse]

Stealing from your employer to save somebody's life is one thing. Stealing from your employer in such a way that he may well become unable to provide those same lifesaving services to others is another.

[Asher]

Stealing from your employer to save somebody's life is one thing. Stealing from your employer in such a way that he may well become unable to provide those same lifesaving services to others is another.

There's no need to be melodramatic.

If the home is saved, it's realistically not going to bankrupt the firehouse. If you're worried about people stopping their premium payments after they see houses get saved even when they don't pay them, obviously when enough of them stop and the service halts, something would be done -- they'd start paying them again, start a county-wide levy, or set up their own system.