[A] nightmare for Gene Cranick, a rurual homeowner in Obion County, Tennessee. Cranick hadn’t forked over $75 for the subscription fire protection service offered to the county’s rural residents, so when firefighters came out to the scene, they just stood there, with their equipment on the trucks, while Cranick’s house burned to the ground. According to the local NBC TV affiliate, Cranick “said he offered to pay whatever it would take for firefighters to put out the flames, but was told it was too late. They wouldn’t do anything to stop his house from burning.”
The fire chief could have made an exception on the spot, but refused to do so. Pressed by the local NBC news team for an explanation, Mayor David Crocker said, “if homeowners don’t pay, they’re out of luck.”
This particular report is from AlterNet, which is all agitated about this example of Ayn Rand government.
But I don’t know. I figure Cranick gambled and lost. Pay and get protection. Don’t pay and take your chances.
Should the firefighters have said, “Oh, sure, Cranick, we’ll bail you out”?
I say no. I say Cranick practiced Ayn Rand government, not the fire department.
I agree. If you can choose to pay the $75 only if & when your house is on fire, why would anyone pay otherwise?
And couldn’t you argue in small claims court that the $75 was extorted out of you, under duress because your house was on fire?
So, you don’t believe in mandatory auto insurance? Or any kind of mandatory insurance? Or anything mandatory? // When firemen stand around watching a house burn down, things are FUBAR. Put the fire out — protecting the entire area — and bill him several times $75.
But it wasn’t mandatory. It was optional and Cranick opted out. The firefighters protected the property of those that paid.
Why does anyone in that particular county in Tennessee pay property taxes if they don’t get a basic service like fire protection included? That’s ridiculous. The homeowner was being made an example of over a stupid and inappropriate add-on fee.
Did they bother to find out first if anyone was in the burning house before they decided to screw him? If not and someone died, the mayor would be in deep shit, wouldn’t he?
Obion County, Tennessee. Tea-bagging its way into the 19th century.
It was a municipal fire department outside it’s tax-supported service area. There are lots of places that do not have tax-supported fire protection.
I’m with Mark. I don’t care if it’s optional, emergency services are not the same thing as auto insurance after-the-fact. Let someone’s house burn down over a $75 fee? Was anyone worried about the neighbors’ places? Don’t know what the whole story is but this kind of thing is nonsensical. Put out the fire then invoice the guy $5K.
It all seems a little mafioso to me. Pay for protection or suffer the consequences. The mayor made an example of this guy. May as well put his head on a pike to keep the others in check while we’re at it.
I think it’s a little different. Doesn’t organized crime say pay or we’ll burn your house down, not just that they won’t put out the fire? 🙂
I think that since Mr. Cranick refused a $75 charge for insurance he’ll for sure refuse to pay a $5000 fine. (or any fine)
Then what should happen?
The government thinks so highly of insurance companies that they passed a law that says that you can be put in jail for NOT buying health insurance.
Insurance is a business. If you don’t pay you can’t have the product. If you take the product without paying for it, you’re stealing.
EFM
I do not live in the city of Albuquerque. Accordingly I do not pay property taxes that support the Albuquerque Fire Department.
But let’s just say that AFD offers a subscription service to people residing outside the city. Mr. NewMexiKen they say, we’ll contract to provide you fire protection for $75 a year. (As some fire departments have a lot of down time, this could be a win-win deal. More revenue, small potential increase in workload.)
I say no thank you, the chance of my house catching fire is just so small.
But then it does.
Do you think AFD should just come and put out my fire anyway? Really? Do you think the Albuquerque residents who pay to support the Albuquerque Fire Department would think that was a good idea?
Mr. Cranick had three choices in my opinion. He could have lived in the city. He could have paid the $75. He could have voted for county supervisors that would have created a county fire department — and taxed him for it. He did none of these. I think Mr. Cranick is the villain in this story as well as the victim.
If you follow up on the story, you will find that the fire spread to his neighbors house, and the dept ended up having to put out that one.
That is the basic reason why we even have universal insurances. The county is just run by idiots.
Another point made in the news stories was that when questioned, the authorities claimed they would have addressed the fire, payment or no, had lives been at risk rather than just property. But firefighters don’t always know whether or not there are lives at risk. What would people say if a couple of toddlers had burned to death in a house that was ignored because the owners weren’t paid up?
And the other point re: damage to surrounding properties is valid, too. It doesn’t take a fire ***spreading*** for other properties to catch; sometimes, it just takes a few sparks. What property owner is OK with the risk of having non-paying neighbors? And what do you do if neighbors on both sides refuse to pay? Pay for them? Or just shrug your shoulders and assume the risk?
This Tennessee system is screwed up on SO many levels, and it’s a recipe for disaster. Or litigation. Or both.
I would find it interesting how Cranick’s insurance company is going to react to this. The man said he simply forgot to pay the fee, and everyone seems to think he is lying. He offered to pay “whatever it takes” to put out the fire and was refused. It seems zero tolerance strikes again in this case. Petty, stupid and mean.
The firefighters were there already. Isn’t that the bulk of the cost of service, for their time? The authorities really screwed him good over a petty $75 fee. I’m sure some arrangements could have been made for him to reimburse the city for the entirety of the cost.
From the article:
“But last December, a county commission on which every member is a Republican voted to rescind a resolution passed years earlier that would have established a countywide fire department. Their rationale was, of course, the need to keep taxes low, but according to the county commission report, that decision was penny wise but pound foolish. “Because there is no operational county fire department,” the officials noted, “Obion County has missed the opportunity to actively pursue receipt of FEMA Assistance to Firefighters Grants (AFG) and Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), which could amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars of funding.”
Who’s the villain here?