Libertarian fire dept. lets another home burn

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I have an idea how about we tax people and use the money to provide essential services?

Last edited by 91 on 07 Dec 2011, 8:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Letting the house burn is more effective because it scares other people into paying the premiums on time and the fire department can then command a higher price for putting out fires.

The fee is essentially a tax, these folks just choose to not pay it. They knew about it so it wasn't ignorance, they just didn't want to pay it. This is the consequences. This is in an unincorporated community and the neighboring town of South Fulton provides fire service for a fee to those outside their municipality, they are under no obligation to provide their service to those outside it and they can't tax them. Are they suppose to provide their service and risk their lives for freeloaders that aren't even apart of their community? The residents of rural unincorporated Obion county don't want to employ a full time fire department to put out a few fires a year.

Just pay the dang fee. It's $6.25 a month.

True Libertarians, though, would have seen it as an opportunity to roast some marshmallows.

It's not a tax.

It's like a tax in that it's paid to a government organization, but it's a voluntary payment for a service.

The homeowners who had their house burn down should've charged the firefighters for a "heating fee," if they were standing close enough to the fire to warm themselves. Then they could've used that money to pay the firefighting fee. What a tragic missed opportunity.

It's an opportunity for re-development. Suburban renewal, even!

Everyone is saying, 'should have paid the fee,' as if $75 is easy to come up with for the average family. $75 for fire, $75 for police ("Help! armed men have invaded my home!' 'Too bad, you didn't pay your $75 police fee. Shoot them yourself. If you've paid your $75 coroner's fee, we'll autopsy your body and find the criminal after you're dead...'), $75 for ambulance service ('Help! My grandmother is having a heart attack!' 'Sorry, she didn't pay the fee - try CPR, good luck.').

$6.25 a month, they probably spend more on fast food

any evidence that the fire (police, ambulance, etc) offered a payment plan?

Normally, these things are covered by municipal taxes, but as the incident occurred in an unincorporated area outside of any town, the nearest town offered the option of paying a subscription for the service. The township is not under any obligation to provide service to people living outside it's borders, that they offered the subscription service at all speaks to their generous spirit and efforts to help others, something that seems to get lost in many of the responses. These people could also have put a levy on the ballot to fund a volunteer fire department serving the unincorporated area, but for whatever reason have not.

Well lets put it this way, if a fire starts in your home whether or not the emergency services help put it out there's still going to be substantial damage to the property and the items within. Neither the fire department nor the insurer can prevent damage from a fire, if it's going to happen it's going to happen. How large the claim is really doesn't matter to insurers because it's calculated actuarially at the time the policy is drafted.

Fire damaged property isn't worth all that much...especially if in the end the house still burns to the ground, and under the law, liens are paid on the basis of who filed their lien first.



I'm certain that if people were inside the home, the fire department would do what it could to rescue them.

HOWEVER, only in the movies and on TV can you rescue people from a burning building. No fire department will risk lives trying to rescue someone who may already be overcome by the heat/toxic fumes. They'd have to know there are survivors who may still be alive, and the structure must not be involved to the point that it would be suicide to send someone into the burning structure. That is standard department policy pretty much on a global scale.

If only the structure is involved, all a fire department is obligated to do is prevent it spreading. Putting out a fire and saving the structure is a question of resources and how far gone the structure is. This is why they'll fight a forest fire...to prevent it spreading and damaging more property...not to save the already burnt trees.

Other than a mortgage company requiring property insurance and participation in a fire protection service that is normally optional, any fire is investigated for cause...and arson charges are brought if there is cause to believe the fire was deliberately set. Even if there is no criminal conviction, the insurance company can deny the claim and make the homeowner take them to court to recover anything on the policy.

As silly as I think it is to not put out the fire once you've shown up, I'd like to look at one of the deatils in this case again: it was a mobile home.

I lived in a mobile home this summer (that was completely immobile, mind you) and it was tiny. Like the one in that article. If my home had caught on fire, nothing could have been salvaged even if the fire dept did show up. And it was flimsy. Cheap steel and D grade plywood construction. The water from a firetruck would've ruined it just as bad as the fire did. We're not talking about a farmhouse here, where you can extinguish the kitchen and save some bedrooms.

I find it likely that the fire dept showed up and just thought there wasn't anything they could do to save it. Then they spun the tale of "they didn't pay their fees" as a sales pitch for their fees. I bet they made some sales that week.

I once heard a fireman on the news say that a person in a "manufactured home" has about ten seconds to get out if it catches fire. He said you just can't imagine how fast they burn.

Uh, there should be no fee for a fire department. Because you're a monster if you think someone's home and possibly their FAMILY should burn because they didn't pay $75.