Firefighters Let Mans Home Burn Over Unpaid $75 Fee

[Dude111]

http://www.newser.com/story/102189/-75-fee.html

Firefighters Let Man's Home Burn Over Unpaid $75 Fee
Gene Cranick lost his home, three dogs, and a cat in blaze

As his Tennessee home burned to the ground last week, Gene Cranick didn't have to watch the tragedy unfold alone: He was flanked by his local firefighters. The firefighters initially refused to come to the scene as the fire raged—because Cranick had failed to pay a $75 annual service fee. As the fire, which began in some barrels, inched toward his home, Cranick claims he offered to pay them any amount to extinguish the blaze, to no avail. Hours later, his home, three dogs, and a cat were gone. [more]

NO EXCUSE FOR THIS CRAP!!!!!!

I thought FIREFIGHTERS were VOLUNTEER which means they dont get squat!!

PATHETIC AS HELL AND JUST ANOTHER EXCUSE OF HOW THIS COUNTRY SUCKS!!! (And keeps getting worse)

[ShyguyXPC]

And you think EVERY Firefighter is Volunteer and doesn't get paid?

Then you obviously don't get out of the house much.

I suppose you've never heard of Career Firefighters? Bit Difficult to make a Career out of something if you never get paid for it.


and there's something about a news Website, with the Motto "Read Less Know More" that just doesn't sit right.




besides where does it state they were Volunteer Firefighters?

[Chuckiechan]

I understand he was out of the jurisdiction, but had an option to pay the $75.00, but declined to pay.

So I guess his insurance co will pick up the tab.

[Epidemic]

did they say if you don't pay we will not help or did they just send him letters asking him to pay?

[Theophylact]

The real question is, why doesn't the county provide fire protection? And the answer is that they didn't want to raise taxes.

[SiliconJon]

OBION COUNTY, Tenn. - Imagine your home catches fire but the local fire department won't respond, then watches it burn. That's exactly what happened to a local family tonight.

A local neighborhood is furious after firefighters watched as an Obion County, Tennessee, home burned to the ground.

The homeowner, Gene Cranick, said he offered to pay whatever it would take for firefighters to put out the flames, but was told it was too late. They wouldn't do anything to stop his house from burning.

Each year, Obion County residents must pay $75 if they want fire protection from the city of South Fulton. But the Cranicks did not pay.

The mayor said if homeowners don't pay, they're out of luck.

This fire went on for hours because garden hoses just wouldn't put it out. It wasn't until that fire spread to a neighbor's property, that anyone would respond.

Turns out, the neighbor had paid the fee.

"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.

Because of that, not much is left of Cranick's house.

They called 911 several times, and initially the South Fulton Fire Department would not come.

The Cranicks told 9-1-1 they would pay firefighters, whatever the cost, to stop the fire before it spread to their house.

"When I called I told them that. My grandson had already called there and he thought that when I got here I could get something done, I couldn't," Paulette Cranick.

It was only when a neighbor's field caught fire, a neighbor who had paid the county fire service fee, that the department responded. Gene Cranick asked the fire chief to make an exception and save his home, the chief wouldn't.

We asked him why.

He wouldn't talk to us and called police to have us escorted off the property. Police never came but firefighters quickly left the scene. Meanwhile, the Cranick home continued to burn.

We asked the mayor of South Fulton if the chief could have made an exception.

"Anybody that's not in the city of South Fulton, it's a service we offer, either they accept it or they don't," Mayor David Crocker said.

Friends and neighbors said it's a cruel and dangerous city policy but the Cranicks don't blame the firefighters themselves. They blame the people in charge.

"They're doing their job," Paulette Cranick said of the firefighters. "They're doing what they are told to do. It's not their fault."

To give you an idea of just how intense the feelings got in this situation, soon after the fire department returned to the station, the Obion County Sheriff's Department said someone went there and assaulted one of the firefighters.

Firefighters watch as home burns to the ground | WPSD Local 6 - News, Sports, Weather - Paducah KY | Local

It's quite sad to see the hero element leaving the Fire Department.

[truckpuller]

Thats they way it is in rural areas, you pay a 75 dollar a year membership for fire service, but in some areas if your house is on fire and the department shows up and you havent paid the membership they will charge you a flat fee to put it out. Volunteer Fire fighters do get paid, they get paid so much for responding to fires and accidents,(at least around here). They tried out here to incorporate the volunteer fire department but it was gona raise there(everyones) taxes like 50 bucks a year and the city folk didnt think it was fair that they paid for us rural peoples protection so they all voted no.

[truckpuller]

Oh by the way ..I dont pay the fee either,it will take them 15 minutes to get here and in 15 minutes my mobile home will pretty much be ashes.

[MTAtech]

You don't have a right to police protection or your social security benefits, so why should you have a right to fire protection?

Who says you don't have a right to police protection or your social security benefits?

The police have a duty to protect you. If they're on the scene they can't opt not to protect you. That would be similar to the case of two EMS medics who refused to help a woman who later died.

If you paid into Social Security and met all requirements, you are entitled to benefits.

[Theophylact]

Thoreau at Unqualified Offerings has this comment:

First, as a heartless libertarian it is obviously my fault that a guy’s house burned down in Tennessee because he didn’t pay for fire coverage from the fire department. That seems to be the gist of some commentary. I apologize, and I promise to share some of my Koch-provided lucre with him, if I ever get anything from the Koch Bros.

Second, libertarian that I am, I read a lot of Radley Balko. SWAT teams get wrong addresses all the time. And like any other American, I’ve had my share of paperwork snafus with the public and private sectors. A potentially life-threatening emergency seems like a really bad time to start sorting out coverage maps and billing statements. If my house is on fire, and I’m fully paid-up, the last thing I want is “I’m sorry, but our automated system finds no record of your account. To talk to our accounting department, please call during normal business hours, so an associate can investigate your case and determine whether to send a crew to your fire.”

I mean, I once waited 3 hours in the cold for private road-side assistance to jump-start my car. And a cop car drove by, but they couldn’t give me a jump for some reason related to the electronics in their car, so I’m freezing in the cold and having to piss (and its always worse in the cold) but not wanting to piss outside in an area with cop cars, and, yeah. Where was I? Oh, yeah, I don’t want any long waits when my roof is on fire.

So, if one wants to talk about paying for fire protection through some mechanism other than taxes, I’d rather that it be more like the ER. If I’m not insured, the hospital will send me a bill rather than charging my insurance, but they’ll do this AFTER the major artery is no longer gushing blood. If the guy whose roof-the roof-the roof is on fire wants to free-ride instead of buy fire protection in an insurance-like scheme, let’s talk about that AFTER the fire is out. Libertarians can call him a looter for expecting something that he hadn’t pre-paid for, liberals can chastise him for not buying protection for the good of all, and conservative can, I dunno, something, but that food fight will be more fun once the kitchen is saved and we have non-charred food to fling.

Finally, while I do not know what’s in the fine print of the fire protection contract that the neighbor signed (insert all libertarian disclaimers about the sanctity of the fine print in a contract), if I were the neighbor I’d be pretty pissed if the protection service that I paid for stood there and waited until AFTER the fire crossed the property line. Maybe it’s in the contract, but I’d still be pissed (insert all disclaimers about how irrational it would be to be pissed).

So, I don’t see this as a libertarian issue. A privatized fire protection service could still put out un-insured homes and send a bill for the full cost afterwards (while charging a flat monthly fee to those who buy insurance). A public fire department could and should provide public service (being that a public service is, by definition, a communal thing). Either way, there’s a way to put out the fire.

Anyway, I will link to a few relevant Onion articles to try to lighten this up.

[MTAtech]

I seem to remember a trip to Philadelphia where a tour guide explained how fire departments started. It was Benjamin Franklin who starting the nation's first fire department in Philadelphia in 1736. But people don't know all the history. Franklin was in the insurance business. The fire department was established to respond to buildings that bought his insurance.

So here we are, returning to a time when slavery was condoned, where one needs to pay a fee to receive fire protection.

[no1_vern]

I dont know what all the fuss is about. The family didnt pay the fire department to protect their house. End of story.

ALL you guys claiming "they should have put the fire out" need to realize that IF THEY HAD PAID this wouldnt be an issue. The fire would have been put out and the family would still have a house to live in. The point is THEY DIDNT. Therefore they do NOT deserve any consideration. For some who think they should have put the fire out, then billed them for the service, have you noticed how hard it is to get money from people who ALREADY have the product/service from you? IOW - why buy the cow, when you can get the milk for free?

[The Real Bingo]

If I didn't pay for auto insurance, I wouldn't expect Geico to foot the bill for any damage to my car.

[MTAtech]

If I'm late paying my property taxes the police still come if I dial 911 and my kids can still attend school.
If I didn't pay my health insurance the hospital still admits me.

There are some essential services that should be provided no matter what.

[no1_vern]

BTW: please define "essential services" for us, as MOST of the world dont have any kind of fire protection service, insurance, in FACT most of the world is hard put to have clean water/food.

"essential services" last only as long as SOMEONE is able to pay for them. If NO ONE can pay and/or are willing to pay for the services, they will not be available.

Example: The people in the county voted to not pay the same amount of taxes we pay in the city limits for city police services. So only homes inside the city limits are covered. Because my home is inside the city limit, I pay extra taxes for the city police to come to my home. IF I were outside the city limits, while I would still call 911, the person who comes to my house would be a county deputy(or maybe the sheriff himself) - but it wouldnt be a city police officer.

[sharder8]

If you paid into Social Security and met all requirements, you are entitled to benefits.

Not true . . .

If you retire from the military and you're drawing military retirement . . . you don't get SS too. Don't forget, they took SS out of your paychecks, as well as state and federal medicare . . . but you don't get that either when you reach the "magic" age. What you get is VA or CHAMPUS.


Harder

[The Real Bingo]

There are some essential services that should be provided no matter what.

What does that mean? Is no matter what synonymous with unfunded? Like Social Security and medical care?

Then when you get to the word "essential," you find it's an amorphous word whose definition is dependent upon who defines it. And when you want to fund these "essential" services, I don't want to leave it up to a politician to determine what they are, for I believe a politician's goal is to get as many people dependent on government as possible. He wants to expand "essential services" and make you think you can't live without them...or make you think that only government can provide these services.

[MTAtech]

For us, it's about $400 or so.

I'd much rather pay $75 a year.

I think the real problem here is you think everything is free.

You look at the world too simplistically and see sameness among disparity.

Two communities can require different fire suppression resources. One community may have 2,000 people and spread over ten square miles while another community may have 2,000 people and spread over 50 square miles. Obviously, the first community may be adequately served by one fire station and the second may require four fire stations. The cost of the extra three fire stations must still be absorbed by 2,000 people. Hence, the 2nd community's fire suppression costs would be four times the first, regardless of whether it was a government provided or provided by billing.

[mad1]

Who says you don't have a right to police protection or your social security benefits?

The police have a duty to protect you. If they're on the scene they can't opt not to protect you. That would be similar to the case of two EMS medics who refused to help a woman who later died.

If you paid into Social Security and met all requirements, you are entitled to benefits.

WASHINGTON, June 27 - The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the police did not have a constitutional duty to protect a person from harm, even a woman who had obtained a court-issued protective order against a violent husband making an arrest mandatory for a violation.

The decision, with an opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia and dissents from Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, overturned a ruling by a federal appeals court in Colorado. The appeals court had permitted a lawsuit to proceed against a Colorado town, Castle Rock, for the failure of the police to respond to a woman's pleas for help after her estranged husband violated a protective order by kidnapping their three young daughters, whom he eventually killed.


A 1989 decision, DeShaney v. Winnebago County, held that the failure by county social service workers to protect a young boy from a beating by his father did not breach any substantive constitutional duty

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/po.../28scotus.html

[MTAtech]

That's a different fact pattern, Mad. The analogy is if the police were present and refused to intervene.