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Miss a fee and firefighters watch your house burn. Maybe?
Aumni
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Ok so there are apparently several different 'versions' of this story. Proceed with caution.
http://www.comcast.net/news/newswrap/6218652/becauseofunpaidfeefirefighterslethomeburn/
So I just caught this while making my rounds across the internet and am quite shocked. The guy missed a $75 dollar fee, which according to his quote he had paid the previous years and just forgot this year, so the fire department pulled up to his house while it was on fire and sprayed the houses around his that did pay the fee so they wouldn't catch.
The guy [Gene Cranick] lost his posessions, 3 dogs and a cat.
So his son punched the fire chief in the face.
I cannot imagine sitting by while my posessions and pets [I live on an almost farm with a lot of dogs, horses, goats , the works] burned. While the fire department sat next to me making sure the neighbors houses didn't catch.
I mean...sheesh. What are your thoughts guys? Are you ok with him missing a fee and getting the appropriate response from the Department?
http://www.comcast.net/news/newswrap/6218652/becauseofunpaidfeefirefighterslethomeburn/
So I just caught this while making my rounds across the internet and am quite shocked. The guy missed a $75 dollar fee, which according to his quote he had paid the previous years and just forgot this year, so the fire department pulled up to his house while it was on fire and sprayed the houses around his that did pay the fee so they wouldn't catch.
The guy [Gene Cranick] lost his posessions, 3 dogs and a cat.
So his son punched the fire chief in the face.
I cannot imagine sitting by while my posessions and pets [I live on an almost farm with a lot of dogs, horses, goats , the works] burned. While the fire department sat next to me making sure the neighbors houses didn't catch.
I mean...sheesh. What are your thoughts guys? Are you ok with him missing a fee and getting the appropriate response from the Department?
http://steamcommunity.com/id/aumni/ Battlenet: Aumni#1978 GW2: Aumni.1425 PSN: Aumnius
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I don't know bro, looks like the free market killed his cat in a fire.
This story has been burning up all the blogs.
Everything costs money in that society. Don't be shocked when police start watching people get raped when they can't provide proof of some kind of insurance.
This is untrue in most cases, deaths from lack of insurance are generally from chronic conditions. Once you're in the ER they'll do what they can to save you because most hospital employees are actually human beings.
If you need $1000/month medications to keep living though, you won't get those, because the suits are absolutely not human
I'm really curious if they're actually going to prosecute that one.
Umm, actually if someone shows up to the ER and needs lifesaving treatment, the hospital is required by law to give it to them. If they don't have insurance, the state pays for it.
No hospital is allowed to throw out a dying person because they don't have insurance.
Actually...
Not quite there, but closing in!
I wonder if they'd let someone burn to death if they didn't pay the fee
Except Freerepublic. I did a search for "fire", "Tennessee", "Olbion", "Dude's house burning to the ground", "Dead dogs", and "libertarian paradise" and I came up with jack shit.
Just some interesting thoughts from an interesting guy.
Yeah they didn't touch the O'Keefe CNN story either. That place is astounding in its ability to pretend something didn't happen.
Four posts in and the terrible analogies start.
Doctors don't stand around in the ER watching people die and actually I think I will be shocked if police start watching people get raped because they can't profide proof of insurance.
Just as I'll be shocked and outraged when firefighters watch a house burn to the ground while standing idly by.
In the version of the story that I heard, he chose not to pay. He was living on unincorporated land, knew that he had to pay, chose not to pay, and continued to burn shit in his yard.
The fire department did arrive. They did help him. As I understand it, they asked permission from the mayor to go in even though the guy hadn't paid. The mayor denied them permission to do so.
EDIT: Looks like the homeowner was never in danger, so there was no human rescue. The firefighters arrived to help the neighbor's yard. And the homeowner and firefighters never spoke with the mayor. Leaving original text in, just red, to keep context of later comments.
I can see the guy's side of this. I forget to pay bills sometimes, too, and thank god I live in a city and the fire department stuff is just part of my taxes, so I can't forget to pay it.
I can see the fire department's side of this. They're not vigilantes. They can't rush in against orders, and they did everything within their power.
I can also see the mayor's side of this, to a very very tiny degree. Let's say he says, "Oh, okay, fine, go on in, guys, we'll collect his fee after the fact." Well, what he's just done there is tell everyone, "You don't have to pay your fire department fee. We'll take care of you anyway, and you can always say oops and pay if your house catches fire." That screws the fire department. There's also the question of whether the firefighters or the city would have been covered legally if one of them had been hurt, or even just lost equipment, while going in to fight a fire for which they were not legally authorized to do so. Maybe in that case, someone could have said, "The guy who owns the house can volunteer to pay for any injuries or damage to firefighter property," and in fact I believe the guy did volunteer to do this... but if you're the mayor of the town, I can understand not just taking the guy's word for it, from a "Will we get sued by someone down the line?" perspective. The mayor weighed that against the fact that no human lives were at stake and made the best call he could. It's not what I would have done, but then, I'm a hippie vegetarian bleeding heart liberal with seven pets, all of them rescues, so my priorities might not be completely neutral here.
Blame the mayor for making the call, and/or the guy for not paying his damn bill, if you want. I'd lump a lot of blame on the idiotic "separate bill for fire protection" deal -- no matter where in the U.S. you live, that should just be lumped into the taxes, and hopefully this will get that changed.
But don't blame the firefighters. I've seen nothing in this story to indicate that they sat there and chuckled while a dude's house burned down with the pets inside. My friend who took some first-responder training class (he was considering being an ambulance driver or paramedic, I think?) talked about the laws about when they could and could not go into a building when first on the scene. And some of those laws are brutal and heartbreaking. I imagine the firefighters are pretty much in the same boat.
Well number 2 has happened, I'm sure number 1 is an eventuality.
I can't wait for the truth version of this story.
I've never heard that second account, I'm waiting for a cite personally.
A friend of mine, who thrives on fact-finding on stuff like this, found some interesting dirt on Obion County (since this house is in an unincorporated area, the county has primary financial responsibility for fire control). The most telling one was a line from a state audit on the county:
I need to get the link from him. I'll post it later.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I'll hunt for links that support anything I said. It's clearly not mentioned in your article.
So...
Do you have a point you're trying to make? Because I'm not sure what that is. Like at all.
1) The neighbor who paid the fee and the fire was put out when it spread to his house? That's needless fire damage to his house because of a stupid fucking law. We have a government to solve community action problems such as this one. Or the one wherein people getting sick actually hurts other people too.
2) This is an excellent situation for an individual mandate, if you're going to be stupid and have a separate fee for fire service.
perhaps the blogs should've paid their $75
we have a winner.
Yup, shut it down folks. Nothig else to be done here.
Part of that is cost- densely populated areas can afford fire services, while trying to cover counties in rural areas can be prohibitively expensive for small local governments. Also, fires in densely populated areas are much more dangerous than in low-density localities. There is little or no danger that a fire in a rural area is going to spread to neighboring properties.
Rigorous Scholarship
While hunting, I did find this gem:
"I thought they'd come out and put it out, even if you hadn't paid your $75, but I was wrong," said Gene Cranick.
Well, good on you for believing in the collective power of when-it's-convenient-for-you socialism.
Also, the pets are now in doubt. The fire evidently started on his land, and he had several hours to get into his not-burning home to get out any pets. The pets aren't mentioned until the homeowner goes on Olberman.
nice house, be a shame if something were to happen to it.
Sometimes on really old houses you can still see the old signs hung to identify which fire company the person paid for.
Yes but when those services do exist, as they did here, you have access to them as a tax payer. This is simply a failure in pay-for-service fire department.
And I'm not sure how rural we're talking here, he did have a neighbor nearby.
But as was pointed out, shit like this was one of the primary reasons we have public fire departments now. Its in the communities best interest to see all fires put out immediately, regardless of the property owner's wealth.
he just missed a payment, he even tried to pay it back but they wouldnt let him.
1) Save the guys house. Usually, if a 9-1-1 call summons fire fighters, it also summons police. Since he was rural, it would be the Sheriff, who works for the county (the county to whom he did not pay his fee). Once everything's saved, have the sheriff give him a $75 citation for using the service without paying the fee. Case closed, problem solved, money collected.
2) Whoever was the on-site shot-caller for the fire fighters should have said to hell with the orders. I spent four years in the army, and virtually every NCO I worked for would always tell us "Rule 0: Do the right thing." That doesn't mean obey orders, that means do the right thing. He should have disobeyed orders, saved the guys house, gotten fired, and sued the county for being fired for doing his job.
Well, nobody really thinks their house will burn down until it happens.
What they should have done, if they didn't want mandatory fees, is set up a system where non-payers would still receive the service, but in turn they would be billed for the full cost of the response. Poorly designed program, all around.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
During a round of wildfires out west a few years back, a bunch of private companies did a really good job of saving high-end houses while neighboring properties burned down. In a wildfire situation, saving individual properties isn't high on the agenda for government fire fighters who need to focus on stopping the main fire.
Rigorous Scholarship
Some areas have a kind of 'ambulance fee'. Pay a certain amount per year and if you need to call for an ambulance, then you pay nothing extra.
However, if you don't pay, they'll still come and do whatever. You'll just be charged in full for the costs of the services provided.
Cell phones are required by law, that even if you don't have access to the services of a provider, you can still dial 911 for an emergency.
Some toll roads that use those sensors that deduct from an account will simply send a bill to people who don't have the equipment rather than some kind of fine.
It's not unreasonable to presume that if you call the fucking fire department, they'll show up and put a fire out whether or not you've paid a fee beforehand. It would've hardly been the worst thing in the world for them to put the fire out and then bill him.
I'm a big fan of Coates and I think he does a better job of summarizing this conflict.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/10/mandates-and-moral-calculus/64097