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[Smitty]

Rural Tennessee fire sparks conservative ideological debate
By Brett Michael Dykes
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retweetEmailPrint..By Brett Michael Dykes brett Michael Dykes – Tue Oct 5, 4:17 pm ET
Just about anything can be fodder for an ideological dispute these days. Just consider news of the recent fire at Gene Cranick's home in Obion County, Tenn.

Here's the short version of what happened: In rural Obion County, homeowners must pay $75 annually for fire protection services from the nearby city of South Fulton. If they don't pay the fee and their home catches fire, tough luck -- even if firefighters are positioned just outside the home with hoses at the ready.

Gene Cranick found this out the hard way.

When Cranick's house caught fire last week, and he couldn't contain the blaze with garden hoses, he called 911. During the emergency call, he offered to pay all expenses related to the Fire Department's defense of his home, but the South Fulton firefighters refused to do anything.

["Pay to spray" fire services: how they work]

They did, however, come out when Cranick's neighbor -- who'd already paid the fee -- called 911 because he worried that the fire might spread to his property. Once they arrived, members of the South Fulton department stood by and watched Cranick's home burn; they sprang into action only when the fire reached the neighbor's property.

"I hadn't paid my $75 and that's what they want, $75, and they don't care how much it burned down," Gene Cranick told WPSD, an NBC affiliate in Kentucky. "I thought they'd come out and put it out, even if you hadn't paid your $75, but I was wrong."

Watch a video report:



The incident has sparked a debate in many corners of the Web. Writers for the National Review, arguably the nation's most influential right-leaning voice, have seized on the episode to discuss the relative merits of compassionate conservatism versus a hard-line libertarianism. (See their arguments here, here, here, here and here.)

[Australia's "stay and defend" policy: another ethical dilemma for firefighters]

Daniel Foster, a self-described "conservative with fairly libertarian leanings" who writes for the magazine, took issue with the county's laissez-faire approach to firefighting, calling it "a kind of government for which I would not sign up."

"What moral theory allows these firefighters (admittedly acting under orders) to watch this house burn to the ground when 1) they have already responded to the scene; 2) they have the means to stop it ready at hand; 3) they have a reasonable expectation to be compensated for their trouble?" Foster wrote.

[Elsewhere: Prince William helps make daring rescue with Royal Air Force]

But Foster's colleague Kevin Williamson took the opposite view. Cranick's fellow residents in the rural stretches of Obion County had no fire protection until the county established the $75 fee in 1990. As Williamson explained: "The South Fulton fire department is being treated as though it has done something wrong, rather than having gone out of its way to make services available to people who did not have them before. The world is full of jerks, freeloaders, and ingrates — and the problems they create for themselves are their own. These free-riders have no more right to South Fulton's firefighting services than people in Muleshoe, Texas, have to those of NYPD detectives."

Liberals are pouncing on the Cranick fire as an illustration of what they take to be the callous indifference of a market regime that rewards privileged interests over the concerns of ordinary Americans.

"The case perfectly demonstrated conservative ideology, which is based around the idea of the on-your-own society and informs a policy agenda that primarily serves the well-off and privileged," Think Progress' Zaid Jilani wrote in a response to the National Review writers. "It has been 28 years since conservative historian Doug Wead first coined the term 'compassionate conservative.' It now appears that if any such philosophy ever existed, it has few adherents in the modern conservative movement."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20 ... cal-debate

http://www.firefighternation.com/forum/ ... ssee-house

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/opinion/07thu4.html

I won't post a link to what that POS shitbag Glenn Beck had to say about it. He reminds me of some shitty pro-wrestling heel.

I believe if you have the resources and the opportunity to help, there's no excuse for watching a family's home burn down (with pets inside).
Shame on them and shame on anyone who defends them.

Firefighters Oath

I promise concern for others. A willingness to help all those in need.

I promise courage - courage to face and conquer my fears. Courage to share and endure the ordeal of those who need me.

I promise strength - strength of heart to bear whatever burdens might be placed upon me. Strength of body to deliver to safety all those placed within my care.

I promise the wisdom to lead, the compassion to comfort, and the love to serve unselfishly whenever I am called.

[RevMatt]

My grandfather and my Dad were both firefighters. If a chief told my Dad to stand by and watch someone's home burn, my Dad would have punched him in the mouth and put the fire out.

[Zip City]

To play Devil's advocate, the guy chose not to pay the fee, assuming they'd put the fire out anyways. Isn't that the same complaint people have about folks without health insurance going to the emergency room and getting medical care despite never paying for it?

I'm not saying the guy "deserved" to have his house burnt down or anything, just that this was an easily preventable solution if the dude wasn't a stubborn asshole

[never going back]

To play Devil's advocate, the guy chose not to pay the fee, assuming they'd put the fire out anyways. Isn't that the same complaint people have about folks without health insurance going to the emergency room and getting medical care despite never paying for it?

I'm not saying the guy "deserved" to have his house burnt down or anything, just that this was an easily preventable solution if the dude wasn't a stubborn asshole

Which is why they won't allow people to pay the fee on the day of the fire (including back fees) because then no one would pay.

I think it's a terrible trajedy but it's a small fee to pay for the assurance that you'll get assistance.

[Penny Lane]

To play Devil's advocate, the guy chose not to pay the fee, assuming they'd put the fire out anyways. Isn't that the same complaint people have about folks without health insurance going to the emergency room and getting medical care despite never paying for it?

I'm not saying the guy "deserved" to have his house burnt down or anything, just that this was an easily preventable solution if the dude wasn't a stubborn asshole

Which is why they won't allow people to pay the fee on the day of the fire (including back fees) because then no one would pay.

I think it's a terrible trajedy but it's a small fee to pay for the assurance that you'll get assistance.

i agree. this is terrible but there is no inherent right to this, everyone needs to pay for those services.

[beantownbubba]

Seems to me that this relatively simple situation is horribly complicated by the neighbor's callout of the service he paid for. Before that happened, it seems harsh but fair - the homeowner gambled and lost and the policy of not allowing people to promise to pay once their house is burning is absolutely necessary to the creation and maintenance of the fire dept in the first place. But once the neighbor called out the firefighters and they arrived on the scene w/ the proper equipment and literally stood around and watched a house burn w/ all the attendant risk to human and animal life and property, to say nothing of allowing a far riskier situation to develop than initially existed, geez, i don't know about that. Obviously, the initial principle stays the same, but...but...but...

One possible solution: respond if the homeowner agrees to pay the true VALUE of responding (not just $75, and not just the incremental cost of responding, but the actual full cost plus profit, plus recognition of the value of responding to that homeowner in a crisis). You wouldn't have to calculate it each time, but u could establish an "emergency response rate" that would presumably be something in the thousands of dollars. Not a perfect solution by any means, but way better than nothing.

[Zip City]

Seems to me that this relatively simple situation is horribly complicated by the neighbor's callout of the service he paid for. Before that happened, it seems harsh but fair - the homeowner gambled and lost and the policy of not allowing people to promise to pay once their house is burning is absolutely necessary to the creation and maintenance of the fire dept in the first place. But once the neighbor called out the firefighters and they arrived on the scene w/ the proper equipment and literally stood around and watched a house burn w/ all the attendant risk to human and animal life and property, to say nothing of allowing a far riskier situation to develop than initially existed, geez, i don't know about that. Obviously, the initial principle stays the same, but...but...but...

One possible solution: respond if the homeowner agrees to pay the true VALUE of responding (not just $75, and not just the incremental cost of responding, but the actual full cost plus profit, plus recognition of the value of responding to that homeowner in a crisis). You wouldn't have to calculate it each time, but u could establish an "emergency response rate" that would presumably be something in the thousands of dollars. Not a perfect solution by any means, but way better than nothing.

The problem with that is that the odds of your house burning down are extremely low, so if the option is a) pay $75 a year for something you'll probably never need or b) pay nothing every year but then pay a few thousand dollars on the rare chance your house actually catches fire, everyone would do option b), which would leave the fire department with no annual funds

[LuthierJustin]

What if they had put out the fire? Then from then on no one would pay the $75. Then the fire department wouldn't be able to help ANYONE. Thats what people need to understand, they weren't doing it to be mean or hurtful. Its business nothing more, nothing less.
They did the right thing

[Zip City]

What if they had put out the fire? Then from then on no one would pay the $75. Then the fire department wouldn't be able to help ANYONE. Thats what people need to understand, they weren't doing it to be mean or hurtful. Its business nothing more, nothing less.
They did the right thing

The right thing would be to simply have the fire department fee be rolled into local taxes and not give anyone the option. It's bullshit that the firemen were put in this position to begin with

[LuthierJustin]

but it wasn't so under the circumstances they did the right thing.

[Zip City]

but it wasn't so under the circumstances they did the right thing.

they did the "correct" thing as per the rules, but whether you should let someone's house burn down (with 4 pets inside) has a lot of gray area between right and wrong

[Penny Lane]

What if they had put out the fire? Then from then on no one would pay the $75. Then the fire department wouldn't be able to help ANYONE. Thats what people need to understand, they weren't doing it to be mean or hurtful. Its business nothing more, nothing less.
They did the right thing

The right thing would be to simply have the fire department fee be rolled into local taxes and not give anyone the option. It's bullshit that the firemen were put in this position to begin with

i agree completely, i hadn't heard of this before. you shouldn't have the CHOICE.

[The Black Canary]

How does the homeowners insurance policy cover this? Will they be covered? Will their choice to not pay the annual fee be considered negligence on the part? and therefore; forfiture of the policy? does this make their home owners policy void?

[beantownbubba]

Let's get the facts straight: There's a city that has a fire dept, funded out of required tax payments by city residents. There's an outlying rural area, which presumably cannot economically or efficiently tax itself to create and maintain a fire dept. Having an underutilized asset, the city offered its services to its rural neighbors for a fee, payable in advance.

The city's policy in this case makes perfect sense. The twist is that the fire dept was called out by the neighbor and was actually there, on site, watching the house burn, which it seems to me creates at least a little bit of a moral dilemma.

The economics of the fee are not so simple, zip and LJ. Because the fire dept is already there and funded, any extra income is marginal to it as is any extra burden up to the point where the fire dept would have to buy additional equipment, build additional firehouses or hire addtl firefighters to handle the increased burden created by its rural "customers." A fee of $75 for a guarantee of service v. no service for no fee is one approach. The approach i suggested might be better, might be worse. Seems to me that if it was priced correctly, it would, or at least could, generate more income for the city for no additional cost. Let's say nobody paid the $75, but if your house caught fire, you could be attended to by the city fire dept for a fee of $1,500. For that price, maybe you'd let your house burn, maybe you'd rather pay. If u dont pay, it costs the city nothing. If u do pay, the city makes money because the fee more than covers its costs.

Our $1,500 example is the equivalent of 20 homeowners paying the $75 fee. How many fires would there have to be to at least equal the number of people now paying $75? We don't know. But we do know that $75 is far less than the cost of providing the service when actually called upon to do so, and it's not clear that enough people pay the $75 to in fact cover those costs. The city could come out ahead on my model or behind, we don't have enough facts. But it doesn't really matter if they come out behind because there's no extra costs involved in providing the service anyway and in my model we do know that they're at least covering their costs every time they're called out.

It's not so clear to me that no rural homeowner would pay the $75 under my model. It's the same kind of insurance premium bet that people make every day. Would u pay $75 now to be sure you didn't have to pay $1,500 later and for the peace of mind of knowing that there'd be a guaranteed immediate response rather than a negotiation? What about if the last minute fee were $2,000, or $5,000? The actual optimum price is just marketing and experimentation. Again, I don't think it's a perfect solution, but I don't think it's as stark as "nobody would pay so there'd be no fire dept."

BC: At least in theory, the homeowner's policy premium is priced to reflect the unavailability of fire dept services. If the insurance provider were aware that service was available for a fee, it could require that the service be obtained as a condition of the policy (and presumably the premium would be lower). If that were the case, failing to obtain or maintain the fire coverage would void the policy. But that's a lot of if's we don't know the answers to. It's somewhat similar to the way car insurers price car policies based on whether and what kind of theft prevention devices you have and what neighborhood u live in.

[wrekkr]

not everything can be free,

seriously $75 is very cheap assurance that your home will be protected in as much as a fire department can

its his own damm fault

[Cotter]

Yeah, it's like calling your insurance company for full coverage after your accident.

Dude's a soup can.

[Clams]

I wonder if they would have still stood by and watched if there were people inside that house.

[wrekkr]

I wonder if they would have still stood by and watched if there were people inside that house.

i would highly doubt that and would like to think not. i would have had a hard time just standing there not accidently firing the truck up, but i have absolutely no sympathy for the guy that his house burned cause he didn't pay a measely $75 fee.

['Scratch]

I wonder if they would have still stood by and watched if there were people inside that house.

I think that would fall under the realm of negligent homicide.

[Zip City]

What this does do is put a real life example out there for those people who are extreme anarchist/libertarians who think everything should be privatized

[The Black Canary]

In order to pay off the insurance (unfortunately I work for one) they do require ppwk from the fire department, cause of fire.

And if they fire department chooses to state that they did not pay the fee for town serivces and states that the house could have been saved, well then things are really going to get complicated for this guy.

[LuthierJustin]

What this does do is put a real life example out there for those people who are extreme anarchist/libertarians who think everything should be privatized

I see nothing wrong with what happened, Its his own fault, no one made him not pay the $75. Personal responsibility, its a bitch

[beantownbubba]

LJ, I just want to clarify which question you're answering:

If it's "should the fire dept have responded to the owner's 911 call?" I think you're right.

If the question is "should the fire dept have stood by and watched, waiting for the fire to reach the neighbor's protected property before taking action?" I don't know the answer, but I think it's a lot harder question than you're allowing for, because at that point it's no longer about economics or individual responsibility (at least i don't think it is). It's about the duty and responsibiity we owe (or don't) to fellow human beings and neighbors. Should a person who knows CPR stop and help if someone keels over on the street in front of him? Should a doctor? If you're riding along in your boat and see somebody in another boat fall overboard, should you throw out a life preserver? If your answer is yes, what's the difference between the fire situation (once the fire dept is on site) and these? If your answer is no, why not, and when, if ever, should a person help a stranger in trouble?

[beantownbubba]

Going back to the earlier discussion about what the result would be if the fire dept had put out the original fire out once the neighbor w/ coverage called them out or what people might do if my suggested 2 tiered pricing structure was adopted, what if the fire dept did put the original fire out once the neighbor called them out and the result was that the rural residents got together and decided that every other property owner would pay the $75 fee, splitting it w/ his neighbor who didn't. Is that a good result or not?

[LuthierJustin]

absolutely a person who knows CPR or a Doctor should help someone on the street if they are able, thats part of the responsibility of having that title and job. It has nothing to do with this though. The man made a conscience choice NOT to pay the fee, a person on the street that gets shot lets say PROBABLY didn't choose to get shot.

[The Black Canary]

absolutely a person who knows CPR or a Doctor should help someone on the street if they are able, thats part of the responsibility of having that title and job. It has nothing to do with this though. The man made a conscience choice NOT to pay the fee, a person on the street that gets shot lets say PROBABLY didn't choose to get shot.

eh!!!! wrong

Doctors, nurses, EMT etc... go out of their way to avoid helping people on the street. They are just as responsible if something goes wrong down the road, as if the person had come into see them and was given the wrong diagnosis and they died.

Medical personnel are paying very high premiums for malpractice insurance and they will avoid "helping" people on the street if they can.

Bus drivers are not allowed to help people on or off the bus. Do not touch them, do not bring in their bags, even if they are elderly, no helping with baby strollers etc... MBTA will not allow this because of insurance and law suits. You get off the bus, walk a few feet and fall over, you are on your own. Drivers are not even required to call in a heart attack unless it is on the bus. Drivers are not allowed to carry phones, so it would be up to passangers to call for help outside of the bus itself.

Too many law suits, so it is hands off for a lot of industries that were never like that before. Cabbies do not even help you get in and out of a cab, nor do they usually help you with your bags.

[Slipkid42]

I wish this type of insurance could be called taxes (which we already pay). I wish our taxes paid for services such as fire rescue, instead of knocking down 3rd World countries and paying to rebuild them. Hard to believe that with all the moola we fork over, common sense necessities like putting out fires and health care can't be squeezed into the budget. But let's go save another country (so they can hate us too).

[Penny Lane]

absolutely a person who knows CPR or a Doctor should help someone on the street if they are able, thats part of the responsibility of having that title and job. It has nothing to do with this though. The man made a conscience choice NOT to pay the fee, a person on the street that gets shot lets say PROBABLY didn't choose to get shot.

eh!!!! wrong

Doctors, nurses, EMT etc... go out of their way to avoid helping people on the street. They are just as responsible if something goes wrong down the road, as if the person had come into see them and was given the wrong diagnosis and they died.

Medical personnel are paying very high premiums for malpractice insurance and they will avoid "helping" people on the street if they can.

Bus drivers are not allowed to help people on or off the bus. Do not touch them, do not bring in their bags, even if they are elderly, no helping with baby strollers etc... MBTA will not allow this because of insurance and law suits. You get off the bus, walk a few feet and fall over, you are on your own. Drivers are not even required to call in a heart attack unless it is on the bus. Drivers are not allowed to carry phones, so it would be up to passangers to call for help outside of the bus itself.

Too many law suits, so it is hands off for a lot of industries that were never like that before. Cabbies do not even help you get in and out of a cab, nor do they usually help you with your bags.

i thought doctors, nurses, etc were covered under the Good Samaritan laws..

[Smitty]

Sorry, I can't subscribe to the idea that the guy deserved to have his home burnt because he forgot to pay the $75 dollars. Fine him after the fact maybe, but not come on site and refuse to save the guy's house. If they have the equipment and opportunity I don't think there's any excuse for not helping, money be damned. I've been a member of the local volunteer fire dept and we routinely went to out of area even out-of-state calls where people needed help. We slept on a church floor 200 miles from home for 6 days in the aftermath of Katrina in order to help people out. What if the police dept operated the same way?
The guy should have paid the $75, I agree, but to stand there and do nothing goes past making a point or teaching a lesson and on a personal level plain fucking wrong.
Sorry, I figured this would boil down to inherent human compassion.

[Smitty]

Although it doesn't appear to be the case here, what if a family couldn't afford to pay the $75 fee? It may be hard for some people to believe, but for one reason or another, some people don't have an extra $75 a year to pay for anything. I know Tennessee has a fairly high poverty rate, do you just let them lose what little they have over $75?

OTOH, what if someone in the city limits decided they didn't want the fire dept's service, and decided not pay their taxes on that principle?