This story still makes the rounds, and the result is still the same. The family chose to live in unincorporated land. They turned down fire protection when the county offered it to them. They turned down fire protection when their insurer offered it to them. The fire department did what was required to save lives. Insurance can take care of the rest...oh, that's right.
Hmmmm. I mean, yes, but doctors will still save your life even if you declined to buy any insurance all life long or pay taxes or whatever. I'm not sure I want the same "protect at all costs" attitude extended to buildings, but fire can definitely spread and even if they don't care about your property they might care about other places.
Number one priority on any emergency scene. Life safety... my crew comes first, but I have taken some serious risk to save people. Once the humans and animals are safe, everything else is less concerning. Risk a lot to save a lot. Most "things" can be replaced. My crew takes great pride in saving homeowners animals these days as we now have some tools to help post smoke/heat exposure (Cyanokit and O2).
Adding a second reply with same sentiment. I am also a firefighter, and my main “assignment” over the years has been search/rescue.
We’ll always risk to reward. But more and more the phase after life saving is trending toward “surround and drown” - not that I want to fight like detroit in the 2010’s, but yes we do make a call sometimes to stop risking when lives are all confirmed safe.
There’s also a point where a structure is a total loss even if the “damage doesn’t look so bad from out here” at which point letting it burn as long as other buildings aren’t in danger may be the safest thing to do.
> I thought that taxes were supposed to pay for basic neighborhood services
Neighbourhood is the operative word here. In some parts of the rural United States, homes are far away and far between. Public services of the kind expected in populated areas are impractical, particularly for protection of property rather than life.
With that as a baseline, some "rural" areas maintain this peculiar, low-cost characteristic even as they become more populated. There's a degree of self-sorting behaviour as well, since some residents become attracted to the area specifically for its vanishingly small local tax burden.
I suspect you would find services limited in the middle of the Arabian desert as well.
The United States is enormous and many parts of it are incredibly sparsely populated. For example, Niobrara County in Wyoming has a population of 2,467 and an area of 6,810 km^2, or a population density of 0.36/km^2.
For comparison, the Northern Borders province, the least dense province in Saudi Arabia, has as population density of 3.4/km^2, almost ten times more people per square kilometer.
People outside of the US really have no idea how empty much of the country is. I think there's an assumption that just because much of the land is livable (i.e. not desert, bare rock, etc.), it must occupied. But that's simply not the case here.
Then perhaps the core issue is zoning land properly and making sure people don't spread out too thin.
That being said, the locality in question sounds very much like the low density suburban locale that I'm currently living in. It costs a pretty penny for the government to maintain services here, since there are only about 100 homes in an area at the edge of the desert (which at a rate of 75 per home per month as stated in the article wouldn't be able to cover a basic firefighting service). Of course, that does not bother the government in providing funds for everything from a local police station, hospital (yes, not a clinic), fire station, municipality, garbage collection, etc. The only thing missing (for the local Arabs mostly) is a government school, but then folks with families don't bother with it.
I could draw a similar example of my place in India, which has similar low density characteristics, and to make matters worse, is located in a hilly part of the district, but that doesn't stop the govt. from providing a local police force and fire fighting service complete with a helicopter.
Some amenities are basic needs that if you don't receive, then what the hell are you paying taxes for? Freedoms per second?
And no, I'm not a stranger to America's vast landscape. The fact stands that there should have been better zoning - or don't expect any facility at all, but don't make news out of it.
On a side note, the main link of this thread quotes the example of insurance companies in London in the 1830s, who would compensate each other in case their firefighters took action on fires not in their jurisdiction. If our forebears had such sensible foresight and collective responsibility, then why not America today?
Or you could just let people live where they want to live and make sure they are aware of and agree to the consequences of that choice, which it sounds like they were in this case.
> If our forebears had such sensible foresight and collective responsibility, then why not America today?
Seems like you're generalizing an awful lot from one random news article that is news largely by virtue of the fact that what it describes is unusual.
I think there is a difference between a remote place that is difficult to access and a place that is not entitled to use public firefighters' service. IMHO the former has no bearing on the latter.
I am not judging the way things work in the US, just commenting that I don't think that population density is relevant here as the issue is one of right.
Now, of course, if you live 100 miles from the nearest town it may well take hours for the police or firefighters to show up when you call them. That's another issue.
Edit: I must have written something offensive without realising it...
> I don't think that population density is relevant here as the issue is one of right.
It is absolutely relevant because services can only be logistically and economically viable at certain levels of density. Fire services aren't very useful if it takes them a two-hour drive to reach the fire. So they have a maximum radius where they are useful. They only provide value to the people within that radius. If the density is too low, then there aren't enough people in there to afford supporting fire services.
Public services are not expected to be 'economically viable' on their own. Moreover, whether there are enough people to support service is also a purely administrative and political issue.
You're not addressing my point, either, which is that there is a big difference between getting a crap service because you're hard to reach (which does happen including here in Europe) and having no right to call for help in the first place.
Again, I am not criticising, I am just thinking that there are different, separate issues here.
> Public services are not expected to be 'economically viable' on their own.
They inherently are. If these neighborhoods have fire coverage equivalent to that of a metropolis, but they would be paid for via taxation at the rate of $50K per year per household, that's not economically viable.
Public services are socialised. This means that every single person is not expected to pay as much in tax as necessary to pay for all the services they use. The aim is only that this be the case on average.
So in general people who live is more isolated houses end up being effectively subsidised by everyone else.
In your example the 'problem' stems from a tax base that is too narrow because of administrative and political choices.
In any case, that is NOT the point of my previous comments.
Much of the Midwest is sparsely populated but not unpopulated - you’re never more than a half mile from a house but never much closer than that. It can cause weird servicing issues.
State and local governments aren't exempt from tort laws, etc. If they commit to service a location 100 miles away, and can't practically do so, or someone gets hurt in trying to make heroic efforts to do so, they can and will get sued. And in such a suit, making that sort of unrealistic commitment can and will be held against them.
I don't think that this is how it works (paying taxes doesn't entitle to a level of service) but I admit I don't know US law.
As a side note, in this very case the issue wasn't remoteness since they could have had access to firefighters for a small annual fee. Rather it was a legal and administrative issue. But I would indeed be curious if voluntarily paying a fee rather then being taxed can have an impact on any enforceable expectation of service.
By living on unincorporated land, they wouldn't have been subject to the tax that pays for the fire department (which would be county level or city level I'm guessing?)
Some states like Virginia have city and county both at the top local level. Richmond City is completely separate from the extremely rural Richmond county located more than an hour away.
Virginia is also technically a Commonwealth and not a state as well.
> Hmmmm. I mean, yes, but doctors will still save your life even if you declined to buy any insurance all life long or pay taxes or whatever.
ERs in the US are required to provide stabilizing care to patients who come in, even if the patient can't pay, by law. It's a law because otherwise some of them wouldn't.
Eh, kinda, but it's not like you can walk into an ER with just any condition and get treated for free. You've got to be having pretty serious problems before they're required to do anything about it, and even then they're not required to fully treat you, just get you stable.
The municipal fire department's insurer told them that they would not cover injuries sustained while fighting fires on uninsured homes, which was the final straw for the fire department.
The FD had tried for years to find a workable solution and failed because the people in the unincorporated part of the county just didn't want to pay for fire services. IIRC, the county had tried three times in the previous decade to pass taxes to either fund the municipal FD or set up their own; three times the residents of the unincorporated part voted against it. The FD had tried retroactively charging owners, and spent more on collections than they'd earn.
They will save your life. They won't treat your trick knee, erectile dysfunction, or failing vision. And they eventually put it out to prevent it spreading. Just not with the same fervor of preventing property damage.
Funny, we get called for much less than a hurt knee and failing vision via 911 every day. I don't have a choice other to send them to the ER if that is what they want. I recently went to a call where the young man thought he took too much "extenze"... Long story short, we checked vitals and asked if he wanted to be seen at ER for further evaluation. "Nah man, I got work to do now... just thought I was gonna die for a second." Anxiety and Panic... number one call type.
My wife called for me because I accidentally drank my mouthwash. I couldn't speak and technically couldn't breath for a minute. And I would have been fine, but the bottle said to call poison control (or something - this was 10 years back) if ingested. So my wife called while I was wheezing. By the time the ambulance arrived I was totally fine... sorry about that too
> They will save your life. They won't treat your trick knee, erectile dysfunction, or failing vision.
I thought in the US, hospitals were only required to stabilize, not treat, non-paying patients. For example, if someone has cancer, they are not required to perform surgery or chemotherapy, just stabilize their symptoms at the moment.
> And they eventually put it out to prevent it spreading.
Reading the article, that's not true.
They watered down the fence line to protect someone else's land.
> Firefighters did eventually show up, but only to fight the fire on the neighboring property, whose owner had paid the fee.
> "They put water out on the fence line out here. They never said nothing to me. Never acknowledged. They stood out here and watched it burn," Cranick said.
So to your examples...
> They will save your life. They won't treat your trick knee, erectile dysfunction, or failing vision.
It would be closer to the story if it was "they won't save you, but they'll spray down everyone else with a disinfectant to protect them from your disease."
They will evaluate you and give you a ride home if you are indigent. There are places where it's not uncommon to call 911 for a runny nose or whatever, request ER care, and get the medicab home.
Not true. An emergency department in the US is obligated to provide life-saving care, as are EMS services and hospital doctors if the ER doc thinks you have an immediately life threatening condition . But a random oncologist has no obligation to treat you if you have a life-threatening cancer, unless you go to an ER and they determine that your condition is immediately life-threatening (say, a perforated bowel). Then the surgeon will treat you enough that you are not inmediately dying, but they are not obligated to say, remove an underlying cancer if it’s not causing immediately life threatening problems
But people complain about this too. No one seriously talks about not treating people in the ER with gun wounds, but Obamacare explicitly introduced the mandate that you get insurance or pay a penalty to address this very issue. Everyone is entitled to a basic level of care, but the mandate says that you should have to pay for it.
This mandate makes sense from a moral point of view, especially for true emergency situations. However, the act didn't take care of the cost of care, which was placed on hospitals and ultimately passed on to other patients and the government. Obamacare attempted to address this issue.
EMTALA also distorted US healthcare be redirecting poorer people to expensive emergency care rather than preventive or primary care, which might well serve many of their needs better. That's also something that Obamacare was designed to fix.
The Obamacare penalty for not buying insurance was eliminated by Trump, because reintroducing the free rider problem is a cornerstone of GOP health policy.
Reinstating the penalty is going to cost political goodwill, which is why the Dems aren't doing it.
Regardless of whether the penalty is or is not in place, I wouldn't recommend being poor and sick, regardless of whether you are insured, or are freeloading.
It wasn’t the Trump administration but the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals which struck down the mandate as unconstitutional and being liberal and a supporter of health care reform I think they had a point. I can’t see in the constitution where the federal government has the power to force me to buy health insurance. I like my constitutional rights being protected even when the thing being compelled (me having insurance) is a good idea. It means that things which are not quite so good of ideas have less chance of being forced on me later.
The plaintiffs in the case were several gop attorney generals. Related cases were also carried out by the Trump admin. And several courts had previously upheld that the ACA was constitutional because it does not force you to buy health insurance. It actually just imposed a fine if you didn't and that fine was considered a tax, which Congress has constitutional authority to levy. The GOP forum shopped to get in front of a rubber stamp republican judge.
Additionally, the whole point of these cases was not simply to get rid of the penalty. The idea was to get rid of the penalty so they could go back to the supreme court and again claim that the mandate is unconstitutional because now there is no "tax" associated with it.
I don't know where things are at now, but it seems unlikely to go anywhere now because it would be difficult to argue that buying insurance is required at all at this point. So we are left with the backup gop strategy of hoping that disarming the mandate will simply bankrupt the program. At least until republican voters wake up and realize that the program is miles better than what we had before.
I likewise do not approve of the Feds expanding their powers arbitrarily by declaring the punishment for whatever they wouldn’t otherwise be allowed to enforce “a tax”. Calling the insurance mandate constitutional because the punishment was a “tax” was abusing the intent of the law.
It's pointless to try to draw a distinction here, because you can re-frame the exact same behavior several different ways, some of which are already common, so it doesn't represent any expansion of power. Like, raise taxes by that much and give people with insurance a credit for it, but not those without insurance. Done. No "worse" than e.g. child tax credits, as far as constitutionality. Insisting that the law do some particular word-dance to get to the exact same place isn't productive and doesn't defend liberty.
If you worried about fines being used to deter activities society doesn’t want, and that fine money being collected as tax revenue, you are at least 200 years too late.
Trump's government repealed the individual mandate penalty, and then the court ruled ruled that in it's new form, it no longer qualified as a tax and was unconstitutional. (Not that this meant anything, since the legality of a fee of $0 doesn't matter.)
The court case as a whole argued that because the GOP changed the ACA in a manner that made part of it (the $0 fee) illegal, the entirety of the ACA should be made illegal.
The fifth circuit agreed with some of the arguments in the case (the fee one), but did not practically change anything about the ACA.
And then SCOTUS, surprising ~everyone, ruled that actually the whole of the ACA is constitutional.
Look at this timeline, and you tell me - who spent years trying to re-introduce the free rider problem, and to break the ACA? Congress, the president, and the plaintiff states... or the fifth circuit, which when presented with a singular, narrow question, ruled that a $0 fee (whatever that is) isn't a tax?
Now, as of 2022, we are in a world where the ACA has been thoroughly litigated, and is still here, with the free rider problem hanging like a millstone over its neck.
calling insurance a tax is about as strong an indication of regulatory capture as I can think of.
It should have never been a tax specifically because it's an unconstitutional act. Calling it a tax is the letter vs the spirit of the constitution.
If you and others like yourself want to ensure everyone has health insurance then __make it mandatory for the state to pay for it__. Anything else and you're just taxing the poor for being poor.
That is an interesting opinion, but at this point, both a conservative, and then a super-conservative, packed-with-federalist-society SCOTUS has disagreed with you twice on this issue (5-4) and then (7-2). It's about as written-in-stone as you can get in the United States.
The courts think this is above-board, the executive thinks this is above-board, most of the public thinks its above-board, it's safe to say its above-board.
As I recall, the whole "call the penalty a tax" thing was Roberts' tortured justification for allowing it in the 5-4 vote. Nobody ever really believed it was a tax.
> Slavery was also considered above-board at one point, so...
It was also perfectly constitutional[0], hence the need for that 13th amendment. And that civil war thing. As it turns out, the constitution kind of sucks[0], it has a lot of problems with it. Fewer than it did in the past, but we aren't quite at the end of history just yet.
You're going to need a better complaint than 'it's unconstitutional', as this is pretty verifiably constitutional. The people who have been empowered[1] by the founding fathers to determine what is, and what is not constitutional have determined that this is constitutional. It's not a matter of opinion at this point.
> carrying private service X is required for you to exist in the united states.
And that's nothing new. Government can compel all sorts of things from you. Showing up to contribute your labour to a jury duty. Involuntary servitude in the military. Taxing the land you live on. Following emergency orders. Not heading a communist political movement. Every society - even this society - provides you with privileges, and requires obligations from you.
This obligation has been ruled to be well within the legal framework of this society, and if you think it should be outside that legal framework, you should look into passing a constitutional amendment on the subject.
Or, you could believe that this obligation is a constitutional, but bad idea, and have the legislature repeal it. Either way, it's currently constitutional. [0]
[0] You're confusing 'constitutional' with 'just'. They are not the same thing.
[1] Actually, SCOTUS' powers in this sphere are what's unconstitutional[2], but we all close our eyes, and collectively pretend that they are.
[2] You're not going to find anything in either the constitution, or passed legislature granting SCOTUS the incredibly broad powers it currently enjoys. These powers were invented out of thin air, and are backed by neither fiat, nor democratic will. All that the constitution says on the subject is 'We should, like, probably have courts. That should do stuff, maybe.'
the question is whether or not the government can force you to pay for a __PRIVATE__ service just for __EXISTING__ within the borders of the US.
There is __NO PRECEDENT__ for this. The closest you can get are things like car insurance where you're required to carry insurance in order to drive on US roads. You can choose not to drive, you cannot choose to "not exist".
That puts this into an entirely different category. The fact that it originally got rationalized as a tax opens a whole different can of worms. Good luck refusing to pay taxes.
I'm entirely willing to accept that it's a bad law (It is, for multiple reasons - unfortunately, the situation without it is even worse), I'm simply drawing the line at claims that it's an illegal law (It's not, it's been pretty thoroughly litigated).
Elimination of pre-existing condition exclusions, and restrictions on which factors can be used to set pricing for policies—both wildly popular—create a free rider problem.
Well, right, because most other advanced-economy states require you to carry insurance (more-or-less the solution we were going for, before the penalty for failing to have insurance was eliminated) or cover everyone under a government-provided healthcare scheme of one sort or another.
If your point is just that the US healthcare system is far more-broken than most, and in some unique ways, all for no good reason—sure, yeah, of course that's true.
"Gun wound" as in a wound caused by (actively) using a gun, or a bullet wound, typically caused by someone else using a gun? I could understand the former (like excluding accidents while skiing, skydiving, whatever), but excluding the latter seem pretty cynical.
The vast majority of gun wounds in the US are purposeful crimes or suicides
For deaths, there's maybe 300 accidental deaths, 10,000 - 15,000 homicides, and like 60,000 suicides. Non-death injuries scale similarly, with the caveat that like 6,000 ish people per year try to kill themselves with a gun and fail, but still injure themselves.
Saving burning buildings with no people in them is still a risk to the firefighters’ lives. Why go through that when the owners explicitly declined the protection repeatedly?
In fact Hospitals were not required to treat you until 1986, which was part of the COBRA act.
Prior to that there was a large practice of "Patient Dumping" where a hospital would kick you out if they found out they you couldn't pay for your treatment. Hospitals in the US would literally let you die out side the ER doors.
Then you protect the insured buildings, not really sure why it's an issue?
The same logic could apply to police... what if all the crime is coming from an unincorporated part of town? Do you just go and start policing it (kind of like an invading army occupying)? Or do you erect borders / station patrol cars near key locations?
You call the county sheriff. Sheriffs and courts were the original reason why counties exist, and why there aren't any parts of the country that exist outside of a county, while there are quite a lot of people living outside of any incorporated city.
They will save you from an acute emergency, stabilize you, then dump you into a care home with inadequate care or to the street as appropriate, where you play the long game of succumbing to whatever ails you.
No. Hospitals will do what they have to *against immediate threats*. They will not do what's needed in the bigger picture if they are not paid. You don't get the chemotherapy etc if you can't pay.
Just FYI for all those in the thread who don't know, unincorporated doesn't mean "no taxes, no fees". Generally the county provides services (Sheriffs and Constables, fire dept.), and ambulances tend to all be private anyways. If you're in the middle of nowhere then you may have to join a co-op for helicopter medical, and the nearest fire station may be too far to save your house in a fire.
If you're in the middle of nowhere you're probably also on unincorporated land, but the challenges of being in the middle of nowhere have nothing to do with the land being unincorporated.
The family accepted fire protection from their insurer and claim they forgot to pay the $75 fee, not declined to do so. It's possible they opted out, it's also possible it was an oversight. Certainly, the more human thing would be to make opting in/out more explicit and handle a late payment by sending it to collections (or reminder notifications) instead of just turning service off.
Or do you have any evidence they actively opted out of the $75 payment?
A reporter on the scene spoke to the homeowner, who said he didn't pay the fee because he thought he could just pay after, like happened previously. He literally thought he could get away with not paying unless a fire happened. It's a textbook case of moral hazard.
I discussed the case a lot at the time it happened, and it never came out that he "forgot" to pay the fee. It was very clear at the time that he thought he didn't need to and they'd put out the fire anyway.
People do the same with AAA - don’t pay to renew until you need a tow and pay the renewal over the phone. I think they’re a bit smarter now and make you pay for the years you skipped.
That's hard as I wouldn't back pay but my insurance company goes back and forth on doing roadside depending on if you have comprehensive and has changed the rule and rates to be more or less competitive with AAA. When it's cheaper I use my I aurance, when not AAA. If they made me back pay I wouldn't use them. But I generally don't just do the sign up and tow immediately.
I had not heard that. Reports I saw at the time said he "forgot".
At any rate, in response to the story, the county changed it so paying when your house was already ablaze was a punitive but not impossible option. I believe it was $3,500 when they instituted it.
Which, frankly, seems like the proper way to handle the moral hazard.
That's still the same problem though. If nobody pays the town is still going to be out money even if it's possible to collect $3500. And the reason they don't put out the blaze and then just charge if someone doesn't have insurance is because they won't be able to collect.
The problem is that the municipality is a subordinate gov't within the county. They have no leverage over people outside the municipality, and basically had to have a court fight for every uncollected fee/fine, which rapidly ate all the money that could be collected... if the person living almost tax free on unincorporated land in a mobile home had the money to be collected.
Not quite the same thing, but there are certainly places where people will choose to live, without conventional fire department coverage. I live on an island on Canada's coast, where there is a fire department, funded as a local improvement area. It covers ~ 90% of the population, on a much smaller proportion of the island's area.
People do live in some of these less-accessible part of the island, but it's outside of the department's service area. Fires in other areas are officially the responsibility of the regional fire service, like for forest fires. Our department might go on certain calls, especially life safety, but will typically keep some people and vehicles back in our own service area in case calls come in there as well.
I think the term for people outside of the district is "self-insured", because nobody else will be able to assist quickly.
Article doesn't seem to agree with you here, instead citing different reason:
> South Fulton's mayor said that the fire department can't let homeowners pay the fee on the spot, because the only people who would pay would be those whose homes are on fire.
How do you calculate the "full cost" of having staff on call 24/7, well maintained equipment that's regularly inspected, building inspectors to verify that fire code is being met to keep usage down to sustainable levels, and so on? The full cost isn't $10k in salary and gasoline and foam, it's millions.
My city spends ~$20M/y on the fire department [1] and has ~300 structure fires and ~14k callouts annually [2]. The cost for a marginal fire is definitely not millions; even if you only divide $20M by 300 you get $70k and that ignores the tens of thousands of other calls they take.
Total cost of running the department for a year, divided by the number of callouts. Possibly weight the callout types depending on approximate resources consumed.
Though I am fully in support of just letting the house burn.
These costs still exist in a hypothetical year with zero fires, though. Additionally, people whose house were just on fire with zero insurance are probably not in a good financial position (anymore), and they are unlikely to be able to pay…
If you don't have the money, then a lien is placed on the property and it will be sold to pay the debt. Or you can take out a mortgage to buy it. In any case you'll be richer than if the house is burned down.
Ability to pay still not guaranteed, depending on the financial situation. Family can easily have more that's than assets to their name, preventing collection.
amortize that cost over the population that is covered; perhaps discount the services utilized by residents who pre-pay and charge a premium for those who pay on the spot.
Another problem is the difference between agreeing to pay and ability to pay. Someone might be wiling to pay anything in the moment, but you might be hopelessly unable to actually collect.
The fire brigade would borrow the technique of Marcus Licinius Crassus and buy your property as it burned, improve its value by extinguishing the fire, then rent it back to you.
I grew up in a poor, rural area of the US and can attest that it's true... if you didn't pay the fee (and affix the requisite metal sign below your mailbox) you were on your own in the event of a fire.
At that time and place, fire protection wasn't considered a public service unless you lived in town. I never heard anyone question the arrangement and there was little appetite in that era for the tax increase that would've been required to provide universal protection.
That depends on which rural area. I've lived in several rural areas, and we always had automatic fire service provided by the township, it was just another required tax line item. Normally they contracted with the nearest town (I know in one case the township legally owned half the town fire department and paid half the costs, the others I don't know what the details were, just that there was service from the nearest town). I know of townships that don't contract with a nearby town - but then they go in with other rural townships to form a fire department (generally volunteer - farmers sometimes got a call to leave the tractor and fight a fire)
Townships only exist in New Jersey and Pennsylvania; most of the rest have counties. As you say, it varies from place to place; any of them could start a fire service if the residents vote for it and fund it via local taxes.
Ohio has townships within its counties; they serve as a catch-all for areas that aren't otherwise incorporated as cities/villages, and that can make a big difference for local property tax and services.
Townships exist in most states - only the original 13 colonies don't have them. they are a federal thing, and how land was surveyed (IIRC is dates back to the Louisiana Purchase, but I can't find verification in a quick search. How each state use them differs, but the concept of a 6 mile by 6 mile section of land comes from the federal government. Originally one section (1 square mile) of land was set aside for the local school to own - some would be sold to build the school and rent from the rest would provide for the school teacher's salary.
Most states also have a county, but this is different from a township. New Jersey and Pennsylvania (as part of the original 13 colonies) don't take part in the federal township system and have their own system with the same name that is otherwise not related.
> And here we are in modern times where we do, indeed, let buildings burn.
The linked article aside, letting buildings burn down is in fact standard procedure for fire fighters. A sufficiently dense fire is extremely hard to stop as long as it can fuel itself and a controlled burn down is often the only reasonable way to end a fire. It's not like anything would be recoverable in any case.
Defensive operations on an active fire ground are standard operating procedures; no argument.
But most departments do not operate the way this department in Tennessee does where they did not run the call when it was received because the caller was not on their participant list.
They would have likely encountered a brush fire or, at most, a room and contents fire from the structures closest exposure based on the story and they would not have let it just freely burn.
I am absolutely not defending whatever happened in that article. Truly a bizarre situation.
Where I live firefighters certain actions will require a fee (obviously not paid to the firefighters), like pumping out a cellar or felling a tree on private land which is not threatening any property, but actually not fighting a fire when it would be easily possible would be unthinkable.
Yes. And these duties can easily conflict (in which case preservation of life always has priority). Another reason to let a house burn is because there are still firefighters in there, searching for people.
The clothing of firefighters (at least the Nomex based used here) is extremely good at insulating from heat, but looses almost all protection the moment it gets wet, as the water starts boiling. Obviously that is extremely dangerous for the wearer.
This means that often saving lives and saving property can not be done simultaneously. Some time ago here there was a report about house ownwers getting upset at firefighters for just standing around "doing nothing", while their property burned, which happened exactly for the reason outlined above.
A friend of mine lived in a rural town with a weird mistake in its code, that let him build at the top of an extremely steep grade. The town said, legally we can't stop you (though they immediately fixed the code) but there's no way a fire truck can get up your driveway. Sure enough, his large detached shed with vintage cars in it went up in smoke, and the firefighters tried but couldn't get their truck up there.
Interestingly, the low density of a rural area probably changes the calculus on "let it burn or eat the loss as a prevention measure" as opposed to places where uninsured buildings might be physically touching insured ones.
If this is the same story I read a long time ago, one of the reasons the firefighters didn't intervene is because their health insurance wouldn't cover any injuries, due to the house not being part of their unit's responsibilities.
Universal health care might have changed the firefighters' minds. On the other hand, perhaps other liabilities would not have been covered too, so maybe not.
I think it was a fundamental lapse of judgement and incompetence on the firefighters side. They should have had a plan for uninsured fires nearby, and been able to execute it. What is the marginal cost of putting out a fire for the uninsured, I'm sure its quite low - equipment is paid for, staff is payed for, etc. So they should be able to make a substantial profit by charging $20k for putting it out, or whatever amount they deem necessary.
Just because this was an emergency doesn't mean it wasn't unexpected. We would want firefighters to go the next town over if there was a fire there, so it seems like their insurance policy was improperly under specified.
>>They should have had a plan for uninsured fires nearby, and been able to execute it.
They did have a plan, and they did execute on it - exactly as they advertised.
...and if they decided to risk it, and put out the fire anyway - and tied up all their pumps hoses ladders and trucks, and then another call comes in a few miles away - from someone that did pay for coverage - how much liability would they have for tying up all of their equipment at a fire they are not supposed to be fighting, and thus unable to respond to the fires they are supposed to be responding to?
People in this country should be free to make stupid decisions - and free to suffer the consequences of those stupid decisions.
> South Fulton's mayor said that the fire department can't let homeowners pay the fee on the spot, because the only people who would pay would be those whose homes are on fire.
There must be a price that the fire department could theoretically charge if they were gonna always charge on the spot, and still make a profit, as long as there is some minimum number of fires.
Also it says that this TN guy had insurance. I wonder if it would have been worth his insurance company's while to make sure that $75 was always paid, either by paying it themselves, or making him pay it, or paying it and sending him the bill, and somehow making it a condition.. to protect themselves from having to pay out... as the London article is about insurance companies starting fire brigades themselves for that very reason
The FD had tried retroactively charging for fire services, but then spent more on collections than they'd collect. People living in the unincorporated part of the county were usually trying to pay as little as possible for anything. Three times they voted down taxes to fund fire services generally.
Not to mention the question of duress when the FD shows up and says "sign this and we'll put out the fire."
Don't know how it works there, but the bank through which we have our home loan requires insurance, payment of property taxes, etc. and to ensure all that actually happens it's done through an escrow account. We pay one bill to the bank every month, they handle the rest. Seems like a solid way to make sure these kinda things don't happen, and then we can't forget something like the property tax, which happens every six months.
Back on the farm, which is 30 minutes from the nearest fire brigade, one does have to pay to opt-in for fire service. They still answer the phone if you're not on the list. You're also strongly encouraged to have a pond or cistern near anything you want saved. I don't know if the farm's mortgage required payment of that fee, but I do know we were given insurance discounts for having ponds near the houses and barn.
I do know of one case of a particularly belligerent property owner who refused to pay, had fires, still wouldn't pay, etc. who did eventually wind up with firefighters watching his property burn. Hard to really feel bad about something like that.
How would you deal with the credit risk? or are you assuming that the homeowner has arbitrary amounts of cash, at hand, but somehow not in the burning house?
A libertarian scheme would look like what neighboring counties in Tennessee do, which is to charge you an hourly rate per truck if you didn't pay the subscription fee up front. This is a case where clearly no one thought about how to handle the free rider problem beforehand. I believe they've changed the policy since.
No, the competing insurance companies as described in the video is a libertarian scheme. Counties in Tennessee are a state run operation and their refusal to fight fires is a function of jurisdictional borders, which does not exactly match libertarian values.
I’m commenting on the parent which was responding to the anecdote about Tennessee, and not the article. The fire fighters in question in rural Tennessee are volunteers and NOT run by the state. That’s why they came up with the subscription services. Some of the counties and towns do contract with fire departments, but not all of them and not the one in question.
I’m not actually sure what you’re trying to say here.
> No pay, no spray: Firefighters let home burn
> Firefighters in rural Tennessee let a home burn to the ground because the homeowner hadn't paid a $75 fee.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/wbna39516346