Firefighters Let Home Burn Over Unpaid Fee

[Dirtbag59]

Originally Posted by FRPLG

This doesn't work necessarily.

Imagine this becomes the SOP. So what happens? Now people get to basically decide whether to pay the fee or risk having to pay umpteen more in fines/interest/whatever if they have a fire. Let's say it's a lot. Like 100X the fee...so $7500.

Now how many people pay the fee? None? Some? Who knows but I'd bet a good many of them don't pay their fee. As luck would have it most of them won't have a fire but if just one in a hundred does then the whole deal is all square monetarily. But what if only one in thousand do? Now the county is out a bunch of money. Seems to me that the fines/interest have to be significant...to the point of prohibitive. I am guessing a guy living in a double-wide in a poorish rural county doesn't have the juice to pay $20,000 in fines.

This is definitely not a simple moral question to me. On one hand you can't simply make it policy to provide a service whether someone paid for it or not. Regardless of the nature of the service the leverage to actually collect a fee for the service disappears as soon as you set precedent that the fee is essentially voluntary. On the other hand it obviously doesn't seem right that someone loses their home because of a stupid $75 fee. I guess sometimes fair and right aren't the same thing.

There's a simple principle in contract law. No contract is above the law. The fact that this county and fire department is allowed to ignore a house fire should be a crime. Just like it's illegal for a police officer to ignore a person in need. The closest scenario I can think of is having an illegal alien getting robbed of their belongings right in front of an officer and the officer does nothing. And why should he? The illegal alien doesn't pay his salary.

On top of that the firefighters were way to cocky in this story. A house is burning, that's a hazard. You don't know if something is going to blow up, like a gas line or a propane tank, and do more damage (and you can't say they knew it was safe to let the house burn because they didn't show up when they were initially called). Instead they waited for the fire to approach the neighbors property and then only fought the flames approaching the neighboring property. Someone could have been hurt due negligence. As sick as it sounds, they're lucky that the only casualties were the pets. It's not much different then us taking for granted that we were going to beat the Rams this year.

Protect and serve is not a suggestion based on capitalism. It's a basic right that keeps the citizens of this country safe. You don't get to make an example of people who skimp on payments like that. You find another way to remedy the situation. Actually above all else it's obvious that this method of paying for fire protection is obviously broken. This should have never been an issue to begin with.

Check out the video to see what another local fire chief had to say.
Woman Says Firefighters Blameless In House Burning - NewsChannel5.com | Nashville News, Weather & Sports