Firemen Watch House Burn Down

It's actually against the law to refuse medical services, so you're safe on that one. Just like, if i'm driving around an area that my department covers, i'm obligated to render my services at any time, wether it be a car crash that just happened, or a house fire that they might need more man power. However, some areas might not have that policy in place, it is good for customer service, but, it's exactly that, customer service.

OK just a reminder of the facts...

1) The house isn't in an incorporated part of any town, It is literally in the middle of nowhere. As such the guy doesn't pay property or any other form of municipal taxes, say for.... fire protection.

2) The city he lives closest too, as a mandate offers to include the people that live in this nowhere in their fire coverage for the nominal fee of 75 dollars a year... (it's mandatory).

3) The fire department did not respond to his call because he did not pay his mandatory fee. They did respond to his neighbors call to put out the fire in his field, because they did pay the fee.

As I said earlier, what kind of "*** You" is it to all the people who PAID into the system, if the fire department was to come out and put out the fire? Even if the FD was to charge him for the cost it is almost still loose/loose. If the cost is a few thousand dollars, and the guy can't pay that it could be years before the FD ever recoups the money (if they ever eventually do). If the cost is a few hundred dollars (which it could never be), he pays it but everyone around him says "hey my house probably wont burn down next year and if it does there isn't much to worry about, so why pay the fee".

Loose/Loose

This really actually makes me laugh. I think of it in terms of car insurance. You pay that huge monthly fee for no reason, then one day you cause a serious accident involving injury. Now you thank god for that insurance. No one would feel bad for you if you didnt pay for it, then got sued for all your bananas. Thats exactly what this is. He knew what the fee was, he knew the consequences, and he chose not to pay. The *** hilarious part was he in the article he says he still thought they would come and put out the fire.

Then he pauses and says... "I was wrong." In a southern twang that just hits my sweet spot for the day.

It's called being a respectable human being, and helping a person out when they're in trouble. Maybe after they tried to save the place, he'd start paying his fee? They could also charge him the fee for coming out, and I'm sure he'd gladly pay it, as he said he would pay anything if they would do something.

I don't know of any locations around here that require you to pay a mandatory fee (beyond the ones that are in your taxes that you can't choose not to pay) so the fireman will show up and actually fight the fire, in case someone is inside, or something is inside. I've never heard of them showing up to sit across the street and watch and wait to see if it damages something a neighbor who has paid owns. Logic suggests if the fire was put out, the neighbors field might not have been burned, and again, they could charge him for it.

All this was was lousy people being lousy people. I'm not entirely unconvinced some of those firefighters didn't want to help the guy, either. Around here, firefighters aren't even paid. They do it because they want to help people, their neighbors, their families.

Hell, put it out and retroactively charge him for what he owed as fee for showing up, and maybe even double it, just to make a point. He'd be humbled and thankful, and his *** pocket would be sore to boot, plus some of his things he cared about might still exist, and maybe an animal might have gotten out.

Instead people insist on being ***. Yeah, I get it, THINK ABOUT THOSE WHO DO PAY THE FEE~...which is why you charge him for all the missed fees, and hell, why not double it as penalty if it's mandatory. At least that way the option to pay a mandatory fee would make some sort of sense.

Then why would anyone pay the fee when they knew if their house caught on fire that they would just get charged backed fees? this is no ones fault but his own. blaming the firefighters and calling them lousy people is so lol

i think you are confused about how much it costs for them to come out there. it isn't 75$. it is not double the fee. it isn't all of the 75$ payments he missed. It is a hell of a lot higher. The fee is so low because statistically the chance of your house burning down is so small.

Having him pay the fee once they come out there is like buying a dodge viper, driving it around with no insurance, crashing it, and calling up allstate and telling them you'll pay the monthly premium if they will come fix your car.

now could they charge him, say, 1.5 times the expense of coming out there? yeah, i wouldn't have a problem with that. i would assume that the reason they didn't do that is because they doubt they'd end up seeing the money, sort of like hospitals when they treat people with no health care

If you own land, you're paying taxes. IT might be a homestead tax, or a residential tax that may or may not include municipal tax, you can bet the county gets theirs if there's no established city. The reason your firemen are doing it for free is because they fall under option 2 that I listed previously, which is where i operated for 5 years. IT's still not free, it was a 2nd job just keeping funds up enough to keep fuel in the tanks. We never had any kind of personal monetary gain from it, it was just "something exciting" to do when fishing was slow or hunting was out of season.

As far as charging him after the fact, what's he going to pay with? Who's to say he's going to plow the ash pile and rebuild there? Like i said a few posts back, this was a lesson to everyone else that skipped out. They offered to extend their fire coverage for the good of those who were willing to chip in, that's taking AWAY from those who were already mandated to pay the fee inside the city limits. We're talking about a small town too, the trucks were old. That was a Grumman Firecat and a old army issue deuce and a half. Those are easily 25+ years old, and they're probably lucky to have those. if it's a town of 5000 people that still only 375k to pay the firefighters who probably only make 25k/yr x 3 per shift x3 shifts, there goes 225k of that money @ 25k / yr, then you're looking at about $30-50 in fuel per DAY of running medical rescue and fire calls, then there's, like i said a few posts back all the money you pay for a fire station, tires, oil changes, equipment for the truck. This fire dept probably barely break even every year, I feel bad for them when that grumman takes a ***and they have to stand roadside begging for money to replace it.


As a final note, had there been a human life safety issue they would have been obligated to act. Be cause it was merely property that the homeowner refused to insure via fire tax fee, it was at the mayor's disgression.

The same reason some people will have their power bills rated evenly over a 12 month period (200, we'll say for example), while some will just pay them as they come, be they 100 dollars or be they 600 dollars. If you overindulge....or in this case burn your house down, you pay out the *** for it. If you're lucky and careful, you'll save money. Lots of business and services offer options like this.

Again, I've never known a policeman or fireman or hospital employee (reminder, some of these employees don't get paid) to do the job and not want to be doing it to help people. Until you get extremely specialized, and that can take many years, it's not even a fantastic paying job, if it pays at all.

That's why it sickened me. I don't expect them all to be superheroes, but nothing about this decision made sense. The guy who paids field did not have to burn if they tried to control the fire sooner. They should have been all over that.

The only instances that I'm aware of where firefighters let things burn to the ground are controlled burns, or in some instances, the building is just too far gone, and judging from the pictures I'm not entirely sure how much was savable. They coulda saved themselves a lot of bad press if they just said "it was too far gone to save, any spraying we did was just to control it."

Besides the too-far gone and the controlled burn concepts, I don't really see any logical reason to allow a fire to burn of that size anyway (besides parties/etc) considering there was open fields all around....fire can spread extremely quickly. This just seemed like all kinds of stupid, to me.

Not it isn't. Do you go around giving food/money to every single person you see on the street? No you must be a horrible person too.

You aren't reading. He lives outside the city limits doesn't have to pay for alot of those taxes. This fee is in place of those. You get what you pay for it's how the world works. If people don't pay we wouldn't have fireman to put out the fires cause none of them would work. It's just like insurance.

And where the hell do you live that firefighters don't get paid? Regardless this is a job. They might do it cause they want to help people and like it but it is their source of income.

Retroactive doesn't come close to working even doubling it. Think about it. $150 to put out a fire. Now think abou how many men went out there to put it out and paying them for their time and of course the fire truck. Not to mention all the on call time. Insurance is cheap because you usually don't use it but when you do it's a ***ton higher than what you were paying. If we went to a silly as needed system you wanted realistically they'd probably have to charge the guy a few thousand dollars just to break even on keeping a fire department running and bringing them out there. It would also make the fire department wish there were more fires lol

Do you do your job for free?

making examples of jackasses may be perceived to be stupid at times, but so is the death penalty :/

also like das said...do you do your job for free?

And the stupid shall be punished

So if the fee ends up being say 20000 dollars, you really think the FD will eventually get paid? I'm not saying this guy wouldn't pay it, I'm just asking if you acknowledge that there are times when it would get paid and times when it wouldn't. If he doesn't pay up, then the FD gets screwed and has to spread the cost out to everyone else who does pay for the service.

Why is it you only extend compassion to the moron, and not everyone else who would have to pay for the moron's mistake?

PUNISHED BY THE GLOBAL MEDIA UPROAR!

But the animals!!!

Appeal to emotion ftl.

At this time of year it's not that bad, after the first freeze is when yo u have to worry about vegetation taking off like crazy, but i see your point. From the pictures I saw, the house was done dealing. There was nothing to save when the FD got there.

This bolded point seems to be the big point that needs to stick but people seem to read over it :/

There's too many variables to give a viable opinion on this for me :/

Like... if the fire fighters could have easily saved the pets then they should have imo (Loss of life is loss of life).

Let the house burn, but it's really sad to see pets die in the meantime.

this is wrong its *** they shouldnt have just stood there and watch and done nothing when one of the guys could have left and bought some marshmallows and hod dogs and said lets have a party



but stil this is way wrong I kinda understand no pay no servos after this i would have quit my job and go do something different like work at wall-mart to get a employee discount if i was one of them firemen

that's a poor analogy. people who choose to pay for what they consume energy-wise generally have the means to pay. your odds of getting a $5000 payment from someone whose house burned down are much, much, much lower.

and, there is a one time payment option.

It's called buying a new *** house.




they would care about this "bad press" why? what, someone doesn't agree with their decision, and boycotts them next time their house is on fire?

i don't see it is bad press at all. i see it as "hey, you should probably pay us to put out your fires, it's kind of expensive for us to do" press

Yeah, if the house was done, then I understand why they didn't put it out. They could have tried to control the burn, but again, I wasn't there.

Really shoulda just said they couldn't save the house so they let it burn (as this is common protocol) but the way they presented it made it seem very mean spirited.

Ok so I watched the video. And I don't know where you guys are getting this watched it burn to the ground BS but it's just that. The news report specifically says they didn't get there until after the house was already pretty much done and the neighbors field was on fire

we don't know that the cameraman arrived at the same time as the fire department

in fact, it's rather unlikely

as a former journalist i assure you people call the fire department a long time before they call you

Yeah but if you watch the report they got there after it was pretty bad. They didn't go out until the neighbors field was on fire

Oh nonono your initial assumption was correct, when this guy called for them to come they said TS you didn't pay your fees. It was only after the neighbor called did they come out to service the neighbor. I would venture to assume that since the fire initially started where he burns his trash, and took 2 hours to get to a nearby shed, then his house, that if the fire dept had come out when initially called they would have been able to do much much more for him.

The bad press bit would just be a bad reflection on the fire department, and nobody needs that. It also probably won't help the mayor come re-election time, assuming his opponent knows how to properly spin a story.

I know when it comes to a person getting lost in places, and a search and rescue team and volunteers are amassed, if the person is found alive, and the only reason they were in danger was negligence on their part, they can be made to pay for gas used in saving them, food/water for the volunteers, renting vehicles, all that stuff. Making people pay for stupid decisions is common practice, and this story is sort of in that vein, although I'm unsure what houses cost there, it's considerably more than what you pay when S&R save your negligent ***. xD

As for the "this was mean spirited" bit, that's just personal opinion based on what facts I do have.

I'm also unsure how long the guy had been living there, but when I suggested the retroactive payment, I meant for as long as he's been there, so (75.00 * years of staying there)*2 = humble pie.

Overall I just feel terrible the animal(s) had to pay for everyone involved (including the owner) and their poor decisions.

Hopefully after this incident the guy learned a valuable lesson. It's now always a good thing to try and 'stick it to the man' or try and beat the system.

yes, if you watch the report, you see that's because they didn't immediately respond

Sequence of events:

1. non paying guy calls fire dept

2. fire department says that's too bad

3. home burns for several hours

4. paying neighbors call fire department and say it looks like fire might spread

5. fire department finally actually leaves the building to protect paying family

6. pictures are taken by media which show house as burning skeleton and firefighters finally at the scene

lol that this was started by a trash fire.