

What life is like in a state where firefighters are paid voluntarily - AndrewDucker
http://theferrett.livejournal.com/995765.html

======
tptacek
This is coming up because of the Tennessee "firefighters watched it burn over
$75" story. But there's backstory to that story.

The fire department in question served a nearby town, and had no
responsibility for the area where the fire occurred. As a service to people
living outside their area, you could pay $75/year to get "out of area"
coverage. The people who lost their house did _two things_ to keep them from
being covered: they didn't pay the fee, _and they chose to live in an area
without a fire department_.

There are many thousands of communities in the US that don't have official
fire departments; a large subset of them have no fire service whatsoever. It
can't be the responsibility of every other community in their vicinity to
provide fire service _gratis_.

I know 'jrockway finds it hard to believe, but I am as liberal as they come.
Even I don't think that when you choose to live in East Bumfuzzle, TN that
you're automatically entitled to the services of the West Bumfuzzle, TN fire
department.

~~~
anigbrowl
But nobody is suggesting they should have just put the fire out for _free_.
They should have put the fire out and billed him a sum many times higher than
what the insurance premium would have been. The idea of insurance is to cap
your liability, not to be a precondition for receiving any assistance.

~~~
tptacek
Where does that logic end? If I build a house in Paulville, TX ("a gated
community consisting of 100% Ron Paul supporters" on unincorporated land in
West Texas), is the fire department of Dell City, TX obligated to put out
fires there? How does that make sense?

~~~
anigbrowl
Assuming it's the nearest town and someone in Paulville begs them to do so at
any price, yes. And then you hand them a fat bill and if they don't pay,
enforce it via the court, something you seem not to have considered.

I am in no way suggesting that someone who is too cheap to buy a reasonable
fee like $75 should get bailed out when they suddenly want in because their
house is on fire, that's nothing more than rewarding irresponsibility. But it
is not the only alternative to letting the house burn, a false dichotomy if
ever I saw one.

There are two reasons to require that the FD respond if they can reasonably do
so. One is economic; the limited damage and bill for extinguishing a fire
might total to a $15,000 loss for the homeowner. If household earnings are
$30,000/yr that's 6 months of work to pay it all back. But if the house burns
to the ground, the loss is much higher; even in rural TN it's probably _at
least_ $75,000 up in smoke. That's a much bigger loss to the economy.
Visualize it as a big bunch of dollar bills laid out along the ground, that
starts burning from one end. I'm standing there with a bucket of water and
you're offering me $5000 to put out the fire, which will leave the owner with
80% of the total, but I refuse and let it all burn because I'm still upset
about your prior refusal to put down $75. Does that seem like a sensible
policy? Am I somehow better off by your loss?

The other reason is legalist. The fire department has an effective monopoly on
putting out fires, because only they have the necessary trucks and expertise.
The homeowner didn't have the option of calling a competing fire department
the way you would call a different cab company if the first one was unhelpful.
Nor could one easily put out the fire oneself. In such a case, there's often a
greater legal obligation to assist than usual.

Here, the fire department's non-action resulted in a _much_ greater economic
loss to the homeowner than if they had turned up and billed him. And they
could have billed him, because a principle called _quantum meruit_ means you
can get a court to enforce payment for providing a necessary service even if
no contract exists. Arguably, that extra economic loss, which only the fire
department could have prevented, was intentionally inflicted. You can bet a
case like that will go to court, and make the whole situation even more
expensive.

~~~
tptacek
I actually priced doublewides before posting earlier. It's not $75,000. In
rural areas, you can get doublewides for under $20,000. A crappy one might go
for as little as $15k list.

In any case: I simply can't get around the fact that we're talking about a guy
who deliberately moved to a locale that didn't have fire service. I can't
understand what moral obligation could require the fire department from
another city to come to his aid. We're all hung up on the fact that the fire
department "stood by" and "watched his house burn down". But it _wasn't his
fire department!_

~~~
anigbrowl
The dollar amount is irrelevant, it's the principle of whether there is some
duty to act or not. By this I mean legal rather than moral duty. They're two
different things, though you could say that there might be some moral duty
towards the neighbors who are otherwise going to have to live next to a
charred shell.

If the guy calls up the fire department and they say 'sorry, busy fighting
fires in our own town,' then too bad, that's what he gets for living in the
boonies. But if they can help, and they are the only ones who can help, but
they don't, it's a totally different situation. In those cases where they turn
up and just watch, it's worse than not turning up at all.

------
wccrawford
"But it had to be done. Because if people knew that the firemen would save
them free of charge, then nobody would pay. And if people knew that you could
avoid paying the firemen up until the moment that first spark hit your
curtain, well, again, nobody would pay."

Exactly. Nobody wants someone stranger's house to burn down, but part of the
rules of living there was that you'd pay your portion if you wanted
protection.

On another site, I saw someone write a comment like "When my house was robbed,
the insurance companies just stood there and did nothing! I offered to pay
them afterwards, but they wouldn't agree!" (Obvious sarcasm.) Insurance
doesn't work if you only pay it -after- you have a problem.

~~~
elbrodeur
>> Insurance doesn't work if you only pay it -after- you have a problem.

It's been said in several other places but this sort of intellectual
dishonesty can't be left alone.

There are a plethora of examples currently in place in society that work well
where if an uninsured person requires assistance they pay AT COST. If they
can't afford out of pocket they set up a payment schedule.

~~~
bluesnowmonkey
That would create an incentive for firefighters to burn down people's houses.
I'm not saying they would, but it's best not to create such situations.

It would be harder to determine the right price to charge people. It's not the
water that costs anything, it's the equipment. Remember, this organization is
not seeking to make a profit, just cover costs. If people pay in advance, you
charge (number of houses / cost of maintenance). Very straightforward. If
people pay after the fact, you have to charge (number of houses that will burn
down / cost of maintenance). But you don't know in advance how many houses
will burn down.

Finally, while letting a house burn down is an ugly business, it's also pretty
ugly when you have to send out collections. You already know they were too
poor or irresponsible to pay the fee upfront, so it's not like they have a
nest egg sitting around.

~~~
elbrodeur
Already, for the uninsured, if you break a leg and need an ambulance ride you
get one. It costs an arm (in addition to your wounded leg) but you get it.

Would you say this creates an incentive for EMTs and paramedics to break
people's legs?

Again, systems are in place to already collect from people who can't afford
lump sum payments. Amortized scheduling occurs in pretty much every industry.

Yes, a certain number of people cannot and perhaps will not pay. But the net
benefit to society is manifest when your neighbor's house isn't burnt to the
ground.

------
GiraffeNecktie
This is what it's like to live in a place where "taxation" is a dirty four
letter word. Call me a commie, but I'm glad I live in a place where public
safety, road maintenance and health care are a shared civic responsibility.
Everyone who can afford to pays and everyone benefits.

~~~
gaius
What happens if you don't pay your taxes? You don't need to wait for an
accident that may never happen like the house catching fire, armed men will
shortly arrive on your doorstep demanding that you do.

Just saying that there are two sides to every coin.

~~~
GiraffeNecktie
What happens if I don't pay my taxes? Lots of annoying letters and then,
eventually, maybe a court order plus fines etc.

They don't demand money at gunpoint. And they'll still send the firetrucks if
my house is on fire. We're a little more civilized than that.

One of the reasons for universal fire service is to avoid the harm that comes
when people try to do it on their own. You don't want random people - the
homeowners, their kids or passersby - jumping in to fight a fire without the
proper training, backup, and equipment.

~~~
cullenking
I promise that if you don't pay your taxes and refuse any additional fines,
people with guns will knock on your door.

~~~
GiraffeNecktie
Maybe where you live.

~~~
tomjen3
Hint: the people who will arrive with the guns are police or possibly people
who works for the IRS/your tax authorities.

~~~
maxawaytoolong
Nobody arrives with guns. That only happens when you are wanted for other
crimes and the Feds are combining those charges with tax evasion. Tax evasion
is also a different charge than simply being delinquent with your taxes.

------
DanielStraight
This ignores the option of putting out the fire and charging more than the fee
would ever have been over the life of the house. Pay the fee each year and
we'll put out your house for free. Don't pay the fee, and we'll still put out
your house if you want us to, but we'll charge 200 years worth of fees.

~~~
frankus
Exactly. The $75 is an insurance fee, not a club membership.

If I shoot myself in the leg and go to the hospital uninsured, they fix me up
and then bill me for the cost. They don't let me bleed to death to "teach
others a lesson."

We can't have people buying insurance whenever they need it, but it's
perfectly OK to have people buy the service that the insurance pays for
directly when they need it.

------
Udo
I know I'm probably the only one thinking like this, but I find this whole
concept - starting from "voluntary" payment right through to "watching their
houses burn so they can learn their lesson" - incredibly perverse and morally
bankrupt to the extreme.

If your neighbor's house is on fire, you don't haggle over the price of the
garden hose. If you're a firefighter equipped to deal with disaster, you do
your damn best to do your fucking job whenever the opportunity presents
itself.

It would actually be less cruel if there was no local fire brigade at all.
What kind of asshole do you have to be if you can just sit there watching a
family's home burn down while doing nothing but make pompous remarks?

~~~
InclinedPlane
What kind of asshole do you have to be to refuse to pay $6.25 a month and then
expect to free ride on a service the rest of the neighborhood paid for?

~~~
elbrodeur
It's demonstrated in the article and elsewhere that they weren't expecting a
free ride.

Again, there are numerous examples of systems working where uninsured people
pay AT COST. Uninsured? An ambulance ride is really expensive. Uninsured? A
broken leg is really expensive.

But you will still get treatment and you will eventually pay the price.

------
pseudonym
I know that people are still up in arms over the Alabama/Tennessee/wherever
firefighters that sat and let a house burn because of this, but I honestly
don't see a problem with this. For most places, firefighting is a part of
taxation. These people have $75 less in taxes, and $75 more as a "optional"
insurance policy.

And to all the people saying "Well pay them when they show up", do you drive
around without insurance until you crash, and then go to an insurance company
with your monthly payment in hand and say "Pretend I've been paying this all
along, now go fix my car"? Do you skimp on health insurance payments until
you're in the hospital and expect to only have to pay the cost of a month's
worth of health insurance? I'm really not seeing why there's such a disconnect
here.

And yet, these are the same people that have a problem with the "omg terrible
communist" idea of a national health care system. Sheesh.

~~~
turtle4
Yeah, tend to agree with this.

In addition to the insurance comparison, which is apt, there is the danger
aspect to consider as well. If insuring your house isn't worth less than $7 a
month to you, why the hell should the firefighter consider it worth their life
(potentially)?

------
mahmud
Here is a video of Tennessee fire-fighters watching a house burn to the ground
because the owner didn't pre-pay the annual fee.

[http://thinkprogress.org/2010/10/04/county-firefighters-
subs...](http://thinkprogress.org/2010/10/04/county-firefighters-
subscription/)

~~~
wccrawford
They weren't 'watching it burn'. They were protecting the neighboring houses.
The ones that -had- paid to support the fire department.

~~~
mahmud
The firefighting fee was $75. Wouldn't it have been more "economical" to
accept what he offered to pay, on the spot, and save the man's house? Instead
of teaching him a lesson? He was willing to pay thousands.

I mean, I am all for free market, but libertarians are pushing the limits of
common sense just to maintain intellectual consistency. Isn't there a room for
"late fee", or "environmental damage", or just good ole "bad PR" in their
model?

~~~
gaius
No the _insurance_ was $75. See the difference? Everyone's small fee upfront
is what purchased all the equipment. If you wait 'til after, then you've got
nothing when you need it.

And a man who won't pay up $75, will he pay thousands _once you've already put
the fire out_?

~~~
mahmud
It's not just about a single non-paying member. It's unfair to the paying
houses around him to have a charred building next to theirs. It would
depreciate their property values worse than anything. Not to mention the
unsightly view, odors and mess.

Since they're able to constitute these drastic "watch it burn" policies by
fiat, why not have a policy entitling the fire department to your car, luxury
items, a portion of your income or some of your property if and only if they
save your house when you're without policy?

If you have seen drunks and problem gamblers, you would know that not all
people are equally responsible. It would be better for society, as a whole, if
fees were taken from them in small portions, and put to service when and where
they're needed.

~~~
Semiapies
What "fiat"? Aren't these city governments with city councils, elections, and
the other trappings of the democratic process?

~~~
mahmud
The law might have been on paper, but the public reaction there, and that of
the media, has been one of shock. I have looked into the subject when it arose
a few days ago, and this particular policy was one made without public
involvement. The entire leadership, every seat in that town was held by GOP
members; they cooked up this policy in an attempt to live up to their own
idealized expectation of a tax-less government.

Serves the American public right though. They're well versed in toy, divisive
issues of "morality", but they're ignorant of laws that affect their lives
everyday.

~~~
Semiapies
So, clear this up for me - is this a secret plan made without public
involvement, or is this due to public ignorance and disinterest in the
subject, despite the people outside the city being offered the fee every year
and the guy in question knowing that he hadn't paid the fee?

And what responsibility do the 300 million members of the "American public"
have to know the firefighting policies of some county in Tennessee?

~~~
mahmud
Realistically, a legal measure can be considered a popular choice, even
democratic, if it was put forth in a ballot, or if the law makers and
politicians that proposed it have argued for it in public fora.

What we have here is a crew of GOP politicians who came to power on biblical
and national issues; having been financed and propped up by their regional and
state offices. The people there, like most everywhere else in the U.S., vote
in lock step with their "traditional" parties, for/against issues than don't
relate to them on a daily basis.

People will happily vote against their own self-interest because they're
under-informed, and held emotionally captive by politicians who invoke moral
and religious argument to further their agenda.

Did these people choose to have a dysfunctional fire department? No. They
chose less taxes, and smaller government. The GOP, instead of thinking of
what's best for the people, decided to stick by their philosophical guns and
deprived people of functioning infrastructure.

I will grant you that specific house was outside their taxed jurisdiction. But
then comes the next argument: why hasn't the state stepped forward to help its
remote citizens? Why hasn't the state of Tennessee dictated a policy of full,
state-wide coverage for fire and rescue services for people in remote areas?
What's philosophically unacceptable about a state dictating to its cities and
towns that they need to support those satellite households? If not, why hasn't
the state collected fees from those households to insure them?

Get my drift?

When a gang of politicians has free reign to act out its wildest political
fantasies and govern by its most idealized rules, well, shit tends to happen.
This is what I meant by "maintaining intellectual consistency". It wouldn't
harm ONE TN politician to tax people in remote areas, not ONE. But they chose
not to.

~~~
Semiapies
_Did these people choose to have a dysfunctional fire department?_

Yes. The people of that county have allowed multiple attempts to set up
county-wide firefighting services to fail. They've preferred fee-based out-of-
area services from a city that has never had any authority to tax them.

There's no "smaller government" aspect here, there's no conspiratorial back-
room change by the GOP. There's just bizarre, partisan axe-grinding by people
seizing on a lurid story.

------
AlexC04
There is another option.

Cost Per Fire = Fire Department Budget / Number of Fires per year

Looking here:
[http://www.ci.bloomington.mn.us/cityhall/dept/fire/budget/bu...](http://www.ci.bloomington.mn.us/cityhall/dept/fire/budget/budget.htm)

They've got about 1200 fires a year and a $3M budget

Which actually works out to $2500 per fire.

So actually, they could charge $2500 to put out the fire and end up at the
same place.

So why not a tiered system. 1) $75 per year - no charge for fire extinguishing
2) $5000 - per incident cost to extinguish the fire. This can be taken out as
a lien against the property for those without the cash to settle up. Perhaps a
property owner does not legally have the right to refuse this service.

The "original spawn" for this post was an article where a fire department
allowed a man's house to burn to the ground. Which killed three dogs and a
cat.

Allowing three dogs and a cat to die for $2500 doesn't site right with me. In
fact it feels downright evil.

I'm sure it doesn't sit right with the firefighters. I'd imagine that they
actually have quite a bit of "psychic turmoil" and possibly even "POTS" (post
traumatic stress) symptoms because of their being forced to allow animals to
die.

What if it were people?

Hopefully hindsight will fix this for the future.

Compared to the actual cost of the fire, the actual numbers paid out by the
insurance company, and the actual losses, even $10K would be a deal.

 _Maybe_ if you have fire insurance you shouldn't _ALSO_ have to pay the fire
department. Maybe your insurance premiums should cover that (from the article,
he does have coverage).

What is the price of life?

In short: this is a major Eff up by a bean counter. It makes me angry.

------
protomyth
Suppose they did help and one of the firefighters got hurt. It would probably
be a violation of their insurance ("Why were you protecting a home not on your
coverage list?"). Would the family who was too cheap to pay $75 a year pay for
medical costs for that firefighter?

~~~
anigbrowl
Most unlikely. The insuredness or not of a property has little bearing on the
dangers it poses compared to any other burning building; it's the accountant
who'd be upset, rather than the insurers.

~~~
protomyth
When buying insurance for providing a service (especially a dangerous one),
there are often conditions about the place these services may be performed and
under what condition. It is pretty likely that their insurance policy will
only cover them on homes that they are paid to protect. It might also be the
case that a certain percentage of each yearly payment goes to insurance.

~~~
anigbrowl
Indeed, but the judgment call about whether a fire can safely be fought would
rest with the experts - firefighters.

If I own a very poorly maintained property but my $75, they may be obliged to
turn up but I can't force the firefighters to enter an obvious firetrap just
because I have a receipt for my payment. They'll do the best they can under
the circumstances. The payment or non-payment of a premium tells you nothing
about the safety risk of fighting a fire in any given building. Look at some
worker's comp policies and you'll find the conditions revolve around the
activity performed rather than exactly where that occurred. Otherwise you'd
need to assess the financial risk for all possible firefighting scenarios in
advance.

Here's an example application for insurance for a volunteer fire department (I
can't give you a contract offhand because they're unique to each FD). The
insurance company does ask what you claim, but this is in order to calculate
what the premium should be. Note that this draws no distinction between
whether or not lives are at risk from a given emergency call. If a FD has a
policy of responding when that is the case (which they normally would), then
the insurance is going to priced to include that anyway. Calls to which a
response is purely optional probably make up a tiny fraction of the total, and
would have a correspondingly marginal effect on premiums.

[http://www.phly.com/products/forms/VFireDept/VolunteerFireDe...](http://www.phly.com/products/forms/VFireDept/VolunteerFireDepartmentSupplementalApplication.pdf)

~~~
protomyth
Actually, the ultimate judge of the actions would be a court not the
firefighters. The insurance company would have a good case that the
firefighter was hurt trying to protect a non-client and isn't responsible to
pay-out insurance on the firefighter's injuries.

As you say, if lives where at risk (not in this situation) and the charter and
insurance policies noted the exception, then the insurance company would be on
the hook for injury payments. This case didn't involve a person in danger and
would probably give the insurance company a very good case for not paying.

~~~
anigbrowl
OK, but when you're considering whether and how to fight a fire in a burning
building there's no court to make the decision for you; and even afterwards,
all the expert witnesses are going to be firefighters talking about the
particular risks presented by the particular structure.

 _If_ the insurance policy draws a distinction between whether or not lives at
risk when a non-subscriber's call is answered, then the insurance company may
have a case as you describe. But your comment seems to assume this is the
norm, whereas the questionnaires I've looked at don't make that distinction.

Remember such insurance policies (issued to a FD) are upon life and limb,
rather than on department revenue stability. An insurance company would
challenge a payout if they felt the fire department (perhaps because of bad
training or staffing policy) foolishly ordered a crew into an impossibly
dangerous situation resulting in injury or death, even if the property owner
was a paying subscriber. In reality, fire crews sometimes have to let a
property burn and just try to stop the fire spreading, because the presence of
chemicals or an unsafe building structure makes it too risky to enter.

------
kznewman
The solution of including the cost of fire fighting in the cost of owning the
house itself helps fix what I see as the mistake in thinking that I don't
benefit from having my neighbors house fire put out.

If volunteer fire fighters are told by the people who they protect that it is
ok to watch a house burn (because necessary costs were not covered somehow)
then philosophically what is to stop them from not helping when I don't slip
them extra money because their labor is volunteer anyway? I think this eats at
the soul of the community.

~~~
gaius
These guys volunteered for a job that might involve getting burnt alive. So I
think their value-system likely precludes corruption of that sort.

~~~
anigbrowl
That'd be nice, but sadly it's not the world we live in. Arson committed by
firefighters is a small but expensive problem for the people who run fire
departments.
[http://www.usfa.dhs.gov/downloads/pdf/publications/tr-141.pd...](http://www.usfa.dhs.gov/downloads/pdf/publications/tr-141.pdf)

Doctors are supposed to be moral paragons too, but every so often one is
revealed to be abusing their trust in some horrific fashion.

~~~
gaius
Were these not part-time volunteer firefighters?

~~~
anigbrowl
Not necessarily, no. See for example p9, which documents two famous cases
involving full-time professionals. Good screening practices seem to help a
lot, but as you know perfect security is an unattainable goal.

------
edfrtghjkjh
The reason this makes sense in Alaska is that a lot of places aren't
accessible to the fire service - if your cabin out in the woods with no road
burns down the fire service can't get a ladder truck there so why are you
paying?

This used to be the policy with private fire services in most cities - until
somebody realised that the house of a poor person with no insurance burning
could start a fire that could destroy the city - so it makes sense to put out
that fire, in the same way that it makes sense to give people free
vaccinations against TB if they are going to cough next to you on the subway.

Interesting that the police are still covered by commie taxes - if the firemen
wanted protection they should have paid the annual police tax, or got a better
deal from a private security firm, or just bought their own guns.

------
sbierwagen
Flagged.

This is a livejournal link, the content of which is a tedious 710 word polemic
of no lasting value, zero cited sources and an overabundance of emotionally
charged outrage triggers.

Not HN material at all.

