Fire Fighters Refuse to Fight Fire, Homeowners Forgot to Pay Fee

Those people look like the 75$ fee would have been a real budget-denter.

 

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Yes there is plenty of blame to go around on this issue. But why give people the choice to pay or not, those fees should be automatic. I also think Auto insurance liability should be paid for at the pump with each gallan of gasoline.

 

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We've been over this before.

It's not Tennessee, it is a specific county in Tennessee.

Indeed it is fairly common in many rural areas:

http://www.newson6.com/story/155521...residents-can-pay-for-fire-protection-service

Or

http://sandspringsok.org/caffeine/uploads/files/RF Opt FY11.pdf

or

http://salcharescue.com/

And

Secondly the people in that county VOTED for it and they had a CHOICE.

$3 per month, if all the county residents paid, or $75 a year paid in advance for a subscription service.

The reason it is more than twice as much for the Subscription service is less then half the county residents were willing to pay $36 a year for fire service.

Arthur

 

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The County residents voted on it.

They were given the choice to pay $3 per month if every property was assessed.

They needed to get more than 50% of the county residents to agree to that.

They couldn't do it.

Which is why less than half the county pays $75 a year for this Subscription service.

 

Now there's a surprise ....

Aye:

You're missing the point again.

 

No I'm not.

You say people shouldn't live in rural places that have to depend on subscription fire service.

But that isn't a solution.

Unless of course you think the County should provide Fire service to you at no cost no matter where you live?

Or do you think the County should provide Fire service to you and charge you what it costs to provide the service, no matter where you live and give you no say about it?

Or what?

What is your brilliant solution to providing Rural fire service Tiassa?

Let this help you in your decision process.
These are the rates for a Subsciption service in Oklahoma if you don't subscribe (@ $4.50/month) and then call for service.
Even then, for them to come out you have to have signed an agreement to pay these rates BEFORE you call for fire service.


Fire and Emergency Response Billing

Structure Fire (including mobile homes and outbuildings) $800.00 per hour*
(2 hours is the average fire time, average billed $2000).
Hazardous Materials Response (plus supplies & contracted services) $800.00 per hour*
Vehicle Fire $200.00 per hour*
Wildland and Urban Interface Fire $300.00 per hour*
Trash Fire $200.00 per hour*
Motor Vehicle Collision $500.00 per hour*

*minimum charge for first-alarm assignment on all types.
Additional charges per hour and apparatus are usually incurred.


Finally, I think you live in Washington, so a little research shows that maybe you shouldn't be casting stones in the direction of Tennessee:

Unprotected Areas
State fire resources mobilization shall not be used to obtain fire protection resources for geographical areas with no local fire protection authority (i.e., unprotected areas, sometimes referred to as “No Man’s Lands”) or for the protection of structures in such areas, except as necessary to assist a local fire protection jurisdiction in confining a threatening fire or other hazard outside its exposed jurisdictional area.

It must be presumed that the owners of improvements in “unprotected” areas are aware of their status, and state fire resources mobilization is not a substitute for local fire protection, regardless of the circumstances.

http://okanogandem.org/documents/Washington/fire mob.pdf

Arthur

 

I felt summoned to post here when the thread title appeared in conjunction with the thread on spontaneous combustion of dead bodies.

While it's true that rural life goes by different standards than the city, it's still shocking that anyone would allow a fire department to to take a stance like an insurance company.

This is why the buzz and spin over "big government" scares a lot people. They cut the service under the budget axe. Certain basic services should never be subject to cuts. The US is still the richest nation on Earth and can afford to take care of its own.

 

The Federal Govt doesn't provide local fire service.
The State Govt doesn't provide local fire service.

Local Fire Service is a County/City affair.

Not all counties have the money to provide 24/7 fire service.

Example:

The majority of Texas is protected by volunteer fire departments.
There are 879 volunteer fire departments in Texas and only 114 paid fire departments. Another 187 departments are a combination of volunteer and paid.

But still there are areas with no fire service.

According to the 2002 U.S. Census of Governments, there were more than 34,000 local general-purpose governments with less than 25,000 residents and 31,000 local general-purpose governments with less than 10,000 residents (accounting, with rural areas, for 38 percent of the nation’s 2000 population).

With so many “small towns,” the average local jurisdiction population in the United States is 6,200.

Most of these have to rely on volunteer fire service to have any at all, but not all areas can even afford that.

Arthur

 

thats one thing I have never understood about the US, why you fragment your essential services so much.

Sure we have local councils but they deal with smaller issues (Garbage, Libraries, some local health services ect for instance: http://www.salisbury.sa.gov.au/Services), emergency services, health, schools ect are all provided by the state government.

I actually live in an area which is on the border between a CFS which is a volunteer staffed organisation and the MFS , I have a friend in the CFS who told me its not actually uncommon for there pagers to go off to come in to provide coverage if the MFS trucks are out or if they get shuffled for coverage. Ambos are the same, they get shuffled around to provide coverage and they try to make Metro crews do most of the work in country to metro transfers because there are A LOT more metro crews than there are country crews but between the ambulance service and RFDS the aim is to provide state wide strategic coverage. I cant understand why the police force especially in the US are so fragmented.

 

Maybe we are different because unlike you we don't have a tiny population in a huge country and we are totally spread out, where as almost all of your people live in just a little bit of it?

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On the other hand in the US there were more than 34,000 local general-purpose governments with less than 25,000 residents and 31,000 local general-purpose governments with less than 10,000 residents.

 

You yourself show that is incorrect, sure the population of Australia is concentrated around the coast line and specifically in the capital cities but you yourself stated that the problem is that some US councils are to small to supply even a volley fire service and fire tends to be a localised problem (except for brushfires of course), what about police services? you think criminals stay in 1 spot? hell its hard enough for the police in Australia to work together (though they are getting better) and that's with 8 of them (1 service for each state, 1 for the NT and the AFP as a federal police force and policing the ACT), your police services are even further fragmented to the point I'm honestly surprised that they can organise speeding tickets and that's even ignoring how fragmented your federal police forces are (FBI, ATF, DEA, Secret Service etc.), the whole idea baffles me.

In Australia we have a metro, a country fire service and a DSE (national parks type fire service) for each Jurisdiction and even with that fragmentation shows up, (ACT bush fires for example where there wasn't enough coordination between NSW and the ACT which I believe lead to the merger of there command structures, and the problems between DSE and CFA in Black sat). All the metro services handle dispatch for all three services. The more you can coordinate these sorts of service at the highest level possible and with a unified command structure the more efficient and effective resource management can be put in place, that's why SA got rid of all the indervidual little ambulance service and went to one state wide provider for emergency work

 

And yet it's not that complicated.

FBI = Federal Crimes
DEA = Federal but focus on Drug Enforcement
ATF = Federal but focus on Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms
State Police = State Jurisdiction
City, Town or County level police = City, Town or County Jurisdiction.

They do coordinate and share information.

As to Fire Protection, like Australia, much of our fire service is Volunteer as well.

But not ALL places have sufficient population density for any fire service.

(I bet there are places like that in Australia as well).

And some rural areas have Subscription service because not everyone wants to pay the annual cost.

Arthur

 

Hey, if some cheapskate didn't pay me $75 well in advance, I'd stand around and watch his house burn down too. Merry Christmas everyone!

 

Excellent example Arthur.

It's kind of like playing poker. If you have a hundred dollar pot and you throw in your hand rather than call for a couple of bucks to see his cards. If you have a $100,000.00 home and fail to pay a small yearly fee for fire protection. That's a very bad bet even if your house never catches fire.

However, I don't think it's fair to make the fire department have to watch a home burn down to make a point. Also, what about the insurance company, are they required to pay for the loss of a home that could have been saved?

I guess what I'm saying is that fee should never have been an issue on a ballot, simply because the home owner is not the only loser when a home burns down.

 

No actually, some areas may be to small to have a fire STATION (but I don't know of any) but they will still be covered by those in the surrounding towns

 

They have no choice.
The City, which pays the costs of the fire department, offered the service at $3 per month if all the county residents signed up, but they couldn't get half of them to agree.

The City is in the position that if they provide fire service anyway, then their rising costs will force them to stop county fire service entirely.

See one of the things that everyone misses is that the way subscription fire services work is that if you subscribe, you are ALSO signing an agreement to pay a significant "call out fee", (typically $500 ~ $1,000) if you call them to put out a fire. If you haven't subscribed, then you haven't agreed to this provision and the fire company can't collect it after the fact.

So their position is they would rather continue to provide fire service to the about 40% of county residents that sign up for it at $75 per year, then not offer it at all to any county residents.

In a county like this, your rates are probably based on if you have subscribed or not, but yes, if you have insurance and you let them know you didn't subscribe, then yes, they have to pay.

True, but apparently the county didn't have the money for this so the only way to get it approved was to put it on the ballot.

 

Actually, they didn't have to respond at all, but they did respond. They made a big deal about going out in their fire trucks to sit and watch the house burn down.

Insurance companies aren't noted for giving away their money. I can't imagine they would give the home owner a better deal than not paying the fire service fees.

It's just that I have paid fees that I didn't have any control over and I have to wonder why the home owners would be given control over this type of fee? Doesn't make any sense to me.

 

They can respond to insure there are no people at danger. If there are, they help, regardless.

Didn't say they did.
My guess is most people who don't pay the annual fee also don't have fire insurance.

Simply because in a very RURAL county like this, though they may have a county manager or some such for routine decisions, spending/taxes etc are often dealt with based on direct voting at town meetings.

They are not uncommon. (this is an example of rules for Mass town meetings)

http://www.sec.state.ma.us/cis/cistwn/twnidx.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_meeting