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Miss a fee and firefighters watch your house burn. Maybe?
Posts
Yeah, I'm all about having higher levels of government step in when more local government is being fucktarded. If nothing else, the state should have stepped in long ago and mandate than all counties provide some form of rural fire protection (or revenue-sharing with municipalities to provide it).
Of course they should. But not essential services, not when feasible. I'm sure some Texas backwaters would love to do away with their school systems, and just let the parents teach the kids about Jesus at home like God intended. But fuck that. And not just because we've determined that kids have the right to a free and appropriate education, but rather because there are some essential services that 50%+1 shouldn't get to pass on for the other 50%-1.
Fire protection? One of them.
Basically, even if all of what Just_Bri_Thanks says it true (and it seems to be), the entire idea of a county just saying "fuck it" on fire coverage for no good reason is absurd.
And ask around here, I'm not one of those "I think country rubes should have to live like urban folks" guys. I'm all about pointing out the difference between rural areas and urban, and telling silly northeasterners that they are silly. A decade or so spent in Montana will do that for you.
Just Bri.
Thanks.
Ed & Larry : "Doesn't matter."
I recently was gifted a thing in Steam. If it was from you, thank you very much!
Is that like Dan Dan Fielding?
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Two small points here. One, most rural departments in practice either use older engines (like 1970's and on) that they've maintained for a long time or apparatus that they've obtained from busier (or wealthier) departments that may or may not be refurbished. This is important because it means its not likely that they even had a 1000 gal tank, but more likely something in the range of 500-800 gallons.
Also they're only gonna dump 1000 gallons in anything close to a minute by using their deck gun and if they're doing that, well then the property was a lost cause anyway and they'd be better off using handlines to protect exposures while they set up a water supply.
The point is that this building was most likely gonna burn down regardless of what fire department showed up based on response time and water supply issues.
Rural departments usually include water tenders in their response since as you pointed out, the water carried on an engine lasts a few minutes with only a single hand line in use.
This is what your taught as a firefighter are your priorities upon arrival (the first three anyway):
Life Safety - yours and then any potential victims
Exposures - if fires blowing out the windows and looks like the building next door may become involved, your first line is stretched to keep the fire from spreading
Property - this is where your house burning down ranks in the pecking order compared to your life and your neighbors uninvolved property.
This case had a city department responding rather than a rural, so I gave the benefit of the doubt and assumed a modern engine. As for how fast they would go through water, my example was emptying the tank at maximum speed. Realistically, you would have a several minutes supply on the truck, but you are still pretty limited.
At any rate, we can agree; I think. Superman could have put it out.
Here is a link to a relevant article:
http://www.fireengineering.com/index/articles/display/9088189335/articles/fire-engineering/firedynamics/2010/07/Mobile_Homes_Small_Houses_Big_Challenges.html
Ed & Larry : "Doesn't matter."
I recently was gifted a thing in Steam. If it was from you, thank you very much!
I mean if a fire engulfs the guys' entire property before leaving it, (not in this case, but in general), don't you now have fire spreading in every friggin direction ?
The problem with that is by the time they showed up (for the neighbor's call), the double-wide was no longer small enough for that principle to apply.
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It's why the "rural" aspect of this confuses me. In Australia doing something like this in unfathomable - if someone's house burns down, and then the grass-fire whips across until it hits bushland in summer, all of a sudden you have a bushfire. Hell you could have a bushfire if the embers got to some suitably dry leaf litter.
I was halfway through that when I noticed it was fire engineering and stopped reading, I get enough of that mag at work.
Part of my point w/ the rural vs city and old vs new was this: A modern engine speced for a rural department would likely either be a combination tanker/engine or at least have a larger on board water supply (closer to 1500 gallons then 500).
An older apparatus or one speced for use in a city might have a smaller one since it has regular access to water. But then again I couldn't say since I haven't read anything that covered that.
This is correct. If this fire was ripping when they arrived they basically had two options:
1.) Attempt to put out the fire immediately. If the water supply is lacking, odds are the water on hand will be insufficient to actually put the fire out fully and in the meantime if a water supply is not established things may get worse, quickly.
2.) Stretch lines, contain the fire using only as much as you need to, wet down whatever is necessary to keep radiant heat from catching things on fire, get your water supply, put out the fire.
Edit: For reference, this was a fire in Newark the past summer that got out of hand because the 3 nearest hydrants or so either gave inadequate or no pressure: Link Can't put a fire out with no water.
All of this is assuming that the person actually chose to live there. Not everyone who is born and raised in a rural community remains there by choice.
I'm not sure exactly how you mean this, but taxes being redistributed is all about maintaining things (expensive or otherwise).
Por ejemplo: federal money going to conservative states:
Complaining that "but living where I live is so expensive" deserves exactly one response: so what? Nobody owes you a living. It sucks having to sell grandma's house, but nobody owes you the funds needed to make staying there viable. And this is true regardless whether you chose to be there.
Having to sell grandma's house isn't even an option if nobody's buying houses in the community in question, or if the house can't be sold without extensive renovations that you also can't afford.
Thin walls, all wood construction, great ventilation from below and above, if it's an older model it probably didn't even have drywall but pressboard paneling instead.
Game over.
A 3 minute response time is something you get with a paid department in an urban area. If these guys were volunteers I'd say that 10 minutes from call to arrival is a safe assumption.
Not even considering that they didn't respond until the neighbor called 911, after the fire hit his property.
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Secret Satans! Post | D&D Wishlist | General Wishlist
they voted for Kerry and Obama and have two democratic senators
Really, if this person wasn't paying the 'insurance' then they shouldn't have been eligible for having their house fire put out--that's the premise that makes insurance an intelligible concept, that you have to decide beforehand. But what this situation just shows is that fire departments shouldn't handled under the insurance model.
But what does their state legislature look like?
Ed & Larry : "Doesn't matter."
I recently was gifted a thing in Steam. If it was from you, thank you very much!
Well, it's New Mexico, so....
...brown people?
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And brown people ALWAYS vote Democrat. It's like.... the law..... or something.
Well, they know which side their green card is buttered on.
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However I thought it was common practice among every bill and fee agency in the US that if you miss a payment they send you a letter telling you to give them their fucking money, not to sit idly by and just go "oh well I guess we don't get our money this time, so we won't put that guys fire out this time."
The goal of our founding fathers was freedom. The goal of our current politicians is control.
You live in Montana? Just curious, because I used to and that's a huge problem up there.
The problem is that this was strictly voluntary. It's the residents of the county choosing whether they want to pay the city to cover their out-of-town fires. There was no assumption that any given county resident would pay.
Yeah I live in Montana, born and raised. And feel not a tiny bit sorry for people who move to montana and ruin it and then have their property burn down because they feel they are too important to follow simple instructions.
And I didn't realize that it was a voluntary thing to pay the $75. I think sending out notices would be the easiest and cheapest way to counter this.
The goal of our founding fathers was freedom. The goal of our current politicians is control.