They said that the policy had been in place for 20 years so I'm wondering if this wasn't the first time this has ever happened.
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$75 or we'll let your house burn down
- Thread starter capnsandwich
- Start date
They said that the policy had been in place for 20 years so I'm wondering if this wasn't the first time this has ever happened.
I kind of agree. If I choose not to take out flood insurance and my house floods, I'm SOL. I can't "add" it the week before it looks like the river will overtake my house.
If it's true that he assumed that they would put out the fire, I guess he proved what happens when you assume.
Maybe they should have put it out and dealt with the fee later. Maybe they wanted to but were told not to. For sure the entire situation is a mess and that is a ridiculous way to handle fire protection. You put a $75 fee on county property taxes or something. That way you collect the fee and no one can "forget" to pay it.
It is Tennessee...
Yes, this I agree. There should have been at least a single firefighter going to retrieve the animals.
However, it's true that the fire department can't really run on 75$/call. I guess they already had trouble with that and can't veer off their policy.
If the chap in question refused to pay the fee for the service after fair warning.....I've found that if you antagonise the 'authorities' in any territory enough, there will only be one winner, and worse still you may be made an 'example' of, but letting someone's home burn to the ground with their family pets inside with the required help there to stop that happening is callousness to a much further degree imo.
If he genuinely forgot to pay his due for fire protection, whomever had the word on the 'do or don't' of saving that situation should be brought to book, to be in a position of making those kind of decisions you should have to be 'human' at least.?
If he genuinely forgot to pay his due for fire protection, whomever had the word on the 'do or don't' of saving that situation should be brought to book, to be in a position of making those kind of decisions you should have to be 'human' at least.?
They should have put the fire out and then hand him a bill for the whole cost of doing it. Not the $75.00 but what it cost for the 911 service, use of trucks & firefighters & clean up. It's like people that live in a flood plane and don't carry flood insurance figuring that the government will take care of them.
You don't know if he gambled or couldn't afford it.
I keep forgetting that only the people with money deserve the services provided by doctors, police officers, firefighters...
Let's not let logic or sympathy or basic decency get in the way of "learnin hims a lessin"
If you can afford a trailer on your property with enough things in it to live in, you can afford $75 a year for fire service.
If that was local policy and he knew it . . .
Tho I must admit I didn't realise things like this still existed. It reminds me of the private fire departments there used to be in times gone by.
I agree that this is what should have happened.
Tho I'm guessing that it's written into contracts somewhere along the line that the firemen are only covered for certain properties and they could have lost their jobs or been fined for breach of contract (or something), had they gone into this fire.
My question is this: Why is a policy like that in place in the first place? If they needed the cops to come out and investigate a burglary or a murder, would they not come out because of a policy? No way. They'd be out there trying to take someone to jail.
Here in Ohio, you have city/town fire departments, township fire departments, and even county fire departments. There are 2 FD within a mile of each other here in my little town of Sunbury. One is for Sunbury, the other is for the rest of Delaware County that's not within the town limits. There are also other county FD's within the county.
That's my thought on the whole thing. I guess I don't know much about taxes and how they get laid out for public services, but it sounded like they were being libertarian about it. If you don't want to pay for government services, then don't. But don't complain when you need it and you didn't pay.
However,
if it's on fire, they should put it out--it could have gotten out of control. Things can happen. They should have put it out but then charged them double for the work, similar to the way insurance plays out--you could risk never having to use it, but if you do, you won't pay as much as you would have.
