[UPDATE]:
There’s a really interesting conversation about this going on in comments … I just want to add, if the Tennessee State Legislature felt obligated to intervene in Davidson’s County offering protections to GLBT workers doing business with Metro Government, you’d think they’d be equally concerned about Obion County’s inability to provide adequate fire protection for its residents.
Guess not.
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Remember Gene Cranick, the guy who lived in South Fulton, TN? He didn’t pay his $75 fire protection fee and when his house caught fire, the South Fulton fire department came out but watched the home burn to the ground. Just as the free hand of the market intended! (I wrote about it here, here and here.)
The Cranick house fire became a national story after Glenn Beck picked it up and all of the “toldya-so” conservatives decided it was a good idea to thumb their noses at the Cranick family who’d just lost their house, their possessions, and all of the family pets because they should have known better! Swollen with self-righteousness, the cons waxed on about “learning opportunities” and how this incident would surely serve as a cautionary tale for anyone thinking they could get away with being irresponsible and expecting the big, generous gummint (“paid for by mah tax dollahs!!“) to bail their lazy asses out.
Ah, except it has happened again. Amazingly, someone didn’t learn from the Cranick family’s mistake:
A Tennessee couple helplessly watched their home burn to the ground, along with all of their possessions, because they did not pay a $75 annual fee to the local fire department.
Vicky Bell told the NBC affiliate WPSD-TV that she called 911 when her mobile home in Obion County caught fire. Firefighters arrived on the scene but as the fire raged, they simply stood by and did nothing. “In an emergency, the first thing you think of, ‘Call 9-1-1,” homeowner Bell said. However, Bell and her husband were forced to walk into the burning home in an attempt to retrieve their own belongings. “You could look out my mom’s trailer and see the trucks sitting at a distance,” Bell said. “We just wished we could’ve gotten more out.”
South Fulton Mayor David Crocker defended the fire department, saying that if firefighters responded to non-subscribers, no one would have an incentive to pay the fee. Residents in the city of South Fulton receive the service automatically, but it is not extended to those living in the greater county-wide area.
Once again, we have the exact same scenario, and the exact same problem. I seem to recall Mayor Crocker saying the city might look at a change in policy after the Cranick home was destroyed; I guess that didn’t happen.
Now, to be clear: I am not criticizing the South Fulton FD, nor am I laying blame on the Bells. I don’t know this family; $75 might really have been too much for them to pay. They live in a freaking trailer, for crying out loud. Look at this picture and tell me if you think these are people living large:
I’d like to know why there weren’t other options avaialable to them? Why are the only options pay $75 for fire protection or take your chances and watch your house burn to the ground if you’re unlucky? What the hell is wrong with this state where there isn’t some other option for people? Whatever happened to social workers and special assistance for the poor and all that? Hey, Mayor Crocker: what about offering a reduced rate for people who can’t afford the regular one?
When did we stop caring about what happens to our neighbors? WTF is wrong with this state?
As I mentioned last year, I’ve actually been to South Fulton many times. It’s in a poor county. It’s isolated. It’s east of East Jesus. These are the communities that are really suffering right now; Obion County’s unemployment rate for October was 15.6%. So yes, some people really are forced to live on the razor’s edge. And rural communities like South Fulton can’t offer free services, or they’d be bankrupt. I get that.
But clearly something is very fucking wrong here. Two families made homeless for want of $75, either by necessity or by carelessness, it doesn’t matter to me. Helloooooo Tennesseee, are you just going to wash your hands of this? Is there no solution? No assistance? If a family really cannot pay the necessary $75 for fire protection, is there not some way we can set up a fund so they can apply for fire protection?
And for those who “forget” to pay their fee, do you really think tough noogies is the best solution? Seems to me there might be some kind of policy or some kind of solution. Put the fire out and make them pay the fee later, take it out of the insurance settlement (if there is one) or whatever. I mean really, Tennessee. Aren’t we better than this?
As Jesusy as this state is, I simply can’t believe we’re also a place that says “sucks to be you” to a family who just lost their home.
Southern Beale 
They’re conservatives, Beale. Conservatism has evolved to simply another flavor of sociopathy. I’d lay odds right now that if this story is in the Tennessean, most commenters are saying that the Bells deserved to be burned out, as did the Granicks.
Fortunately, it’s now after five- and time for strong drink.
We humans have come to where we are because we cooperated with one another. Build towns, build cities, build the civilization that we all enjoy. I don’t know where we’re coming to. It doesn’t seem a good place, at least in Tennessee.
Here in the hinterlands of SW Oregon, most folk still look after one another. We’ve a fine volunteer fire department and I must add that Curry County is broke, probably going to be taken over by the Oregon government. The asshats here wouldn’t approve a 5% temporary land tax to fund the Sheriff’s dept. Still, the fires are put out.
So there must be something in the water in Tennessee, do you suppose? Come to think of it there might be something in the water here as well.
Or possibly ‘conservatives’ are crazy.
The “something in the water” is that people like Mayor Crocker believe altruism is a character flaw.
“Who is John Galt.?”
However Mr. Weiss is dead on.(Maybe a poor choice of words) Although it’s not settled many evolutionary biologists have suggested that it’s precisely the inclination(instinct?) to cooperate that saved homo sapiens from extinction.
Remember: this is Corporate CEO Jesus we’re talking about, who says it’s right and proper to hate on the poor, because there’s OBVIOUSLY something wrong with them – they’d be RICH if there weren’t…
I don’t believe Jesus ever said to hate anyone. Just because you may be rich, it doesn’t mean you are great and have nothing wrong with you. There are some of the biggest criminals, drug dealers, ect that are rich. And just because someone is poor, it’s not always because they’ve done something wrong. You are very messed up in the head, need some compassion, humbleness, and some real education about Jesus…….Here’s a question…If Jesus was the fireman, do you think he’d stand by and watch someones home burn if they didn’t give him 75 dollars? I’m gonna go with a big fat NO.
All of the above.
JzB
They can’t pay the fee after the fact or nobody would pay it unless they had a fire. That’s why this sorta thing needs to be paid for taxes.
But in really rural areas like Obion County the tax base isn’t big enough. Taxes DO pay for it within the city limits of South Fulton. Out in the boonies of the county, they don’t, that’s where the fee comes in. But it’s just really sparsely populated out there. That’s my understanding of the situation.
If there’s a big fine “after the fact,” — say $1,000 — that would deter people who are just trying to game the system. And that $1,000 could go into a fund to help pay for people who it’s been determined just can’t afford it.
I mean I’m just throwing that out there. There’s not a lot of people in Obion County. I don’t know how many people trying to game the system actually have their houses burn down so they’d suffer the consequences. All I’m saying is, there can and should be other solutions. This ain’t rocket science, Obion County isn’t the only rural county in America. What do other communities do?
I mean for crying out loud, the fire department DID come out in both of these cases, so that’s money spent deploying an emergency team when they didn’t get the $75. But they just stood and watched.
But I’d say if the tax base isn’t large enough, there has got to be something they can cut, to free up money for something critical like fire department services. The problem I see with charging a big fine afterwards is that I don’t know how much of an incentive that would be to pay the fee, because fires just aren’t that common. I do volunteer EMS in the county that borders my city, and I know how excited our firefighters get if there’s an actual fire because it almost never happens. A guy I’ve run on the ambulance with actually saw the volunteer organization he used to run with shut down because it serviced a particularly rural part of the county and they went an entire calendar year without a single call (and that’s EMS, so we’re not even talking fire there). So if you were to try to game the system in that scenario, it’d be a game with the odds squarely in your favor.
The other side is that even if you charge the fee, how do you get people to pay it? If it can’t be covered by taxes because the citizens are too poor, than how will one of those same citizens pay a $1000 fee? When we take somebody to the hospital in the ambulance, my understanding is that it’s a $500 charge (I believe I heard LifeGuard, our medical helicopters, are in the $20,000 range per call, at which point I joke that I’d rather they just let me die). However, if they have no insurance and no significant income, then they can pretty much just ignore the bill, and the government just has to eat the cost.
There are all sorts of ways to get people to pay a fee, garnishing wages and social security, etc. Just ask the IRS!
The problem isn’t necessarily that the citizens are too poor, it’s that the population is too low. The tax base is too low. It’s farm country. There aren’t enough citizens to pay to maintain full-time fire services and the like. Rural areas operate really differently from metropolitan areas for this reason. When I lived out there I had to contract with a private company for my trash service. There’s really nothing to cut. It’s why they still have things like constables in Tennessee, they’re a kind of volunteer law enforcement, issuing warrants and such in rural areas. That’s life in the sticks.
Jim Voorhies is right, I think we had a volunteer FD when I lived in the sticks. I think how it works in Obion County is the South Fulton FD comes out to those who pay. The county might want to look at setting up a volunteer FD since clearly the system they have doesn’t work.
Indeed so long as the person has wages to garnish. Not trying to be contrarian, just pointing out what I know to be the case from some fairly recent discussions with my lieutenant about a lady we got calling an ambulance once to twice a day right now hoping to get an ER doc to prescribe her pain meds.
As a volunteer rescue worker, I’m a fan of volunteer emergency services. It’s a great way for people to contribute back to their community and it does often save the local government some cash, but they aren’t cheap either. Even if they just start out with a cheap quarter-million dollar fire engine and park it in some county lot somewhere or something, that’s still likely to cost more than $75/resident at least the first few years. And they are gonna eventually want to build a firehouse to house the volunteers too. My volunteer organization is a private organization, but we use county facilities and county-owned apparatuses. While we have fundraisers and the like, without county funding, we wouldn’t exist. We save the county cash by cutting back on the career staff they have to pay, and they allow us to function by letting us utilize the equipment they already have for career staff.
I think the cheapest way to do it is just what they are doing, but making the fee optional puts everyone in a bad position.
Well I never suggested we charge POOR people a $1,000 fine! The extra fee was my suggestion for people who do have means to pay and don’t.
There are a ton of ways the poor can be served, from a reduced rate based on one’s ability to pay to having the county pay it and get reimbursed by the state.
I’m sure the way the do it is the cheapest but it’s clearly not the most effective.
Wasn’t there supposedly a neighbor in the last case who offered to pay a lot of money if the FD would only put out the fire, and yet they still refused? I can’t remember.
It was the homeowner! He begged the FD to put the fire out, said he’d give them however much money they wanted. But you know … “policies!” etc. etc.
Seems like a failure of capitalism to me. If this FD was truly Rand-style capitalists they would take the cash, assuming it was enough to pay their expenses of coming out that day plus 10-20% extra for a profit. /shrug
These libertarians never made much sense anyway.
Lots of counties only have volunteer service for fire departments. We did when we lived in Cheatham County. The area is too rural to be able to provide enough of a tax inflow to provide for fire services paid by the government. Plus it’s highly territorial & county based. Where we lived, there was a VFD less than two miles away, but it was in Dickson County. The 911 center wouldn’t have called them if our house had caught fire, they would have called the VFD located 12 miles away in northern Cheatham County. But because we belonged (and contributed) to both, we would have gotten help from both. Mind you, we’d have to call the closest one ourselves since the emergency system wouldn’t have crossed the symbolic county line to let the closest VFD know what was happening.
Rural counties aren’t willing to raise property taxes (and neither are their citizens willing to pay them, for lots of reasons based on stubbornness and poverty) to the point that they can afford to provide enough fire equipment and fire stations, even if staffed by volunteers. Then you still have to deal with the volunteer nature of it. Although those people are willing to risk their lives when called, and commonly do, they’re at work somewhere else when the call comes and have to work close enough by and have employers willing enough for them to leave work, go to the station, and THEN respond.
Southern Beale:
The Crannicks lived in a house, IIRC, not a “mobile home” (what a ridiculous misnomer). Why is the charge, $75, the same for both domiciles? Did either of these people have any fire insurance? I’m guessing that if they did, the insurer may decide to re-rate the entire county based on selective fire protection policies. Does the county NOT send deputies out to domestic calls or other problems in these areas? Sounds very fucked up to me.
That’s a good question on why the charge is the same, can’t answer that.
I think if there’s a big problem then the county sheriff’s office will respond but for non-emergency things like warrants and such, constables are used. And honestly, not every county uses constables … don’t know about Obion but I assume they do since they are boonies with a capital B.
As I read these comments all manner of statistical analysis suggests itself for a bureaucrat attempting to account for the costs of fire protection( and believe me I know nothing of municipal or rural budgeting.) But in thinking along those lines I was wondering is there any data to support the mayors assumption that if they put out one uninsured’s fire no one would pay the fee?
…I was wondering is there any data to support the mayors assumption that if they put out one uninsured’s fire no one would pay the fee?
I’m sure not. I would guess that is simply an assumption based on “common sense.” If they had a sensible local government they might see if some students at Murray State University — not too far from South Fulton, across the state line — could do some kind of study for them looking at that very thing. Maybe ask at their Social Studies Dept.
But this is all probably far too wonky for the South Fulton/Obion County folks.
But that’s another good point. It appears there already exists an assumption that the service is provided regardless of whether one pays the fee — the example of Gene Cranick proves that. But now that two homes have burned to the ground garnering national headlines … well, perhaps public assumptions have changed.
Let me clarify, my knowledge of South Fulton is beer-based. When I lived in a dry county in Kentucky, Obion County, TN was the nearest package store.
I betcha the fella running the package store knows how much beer to lay in to cover his costs and to keep the thirsty Kentuckians coming back. Perhaps he should also be put in charge of fire protection.
Maybe if hizzoner just went around to visit the folks in the holler and said, “Hey, this is a mighty fine manyoofakchure home you got chere; be a damned shame, sumpin was to happen to it!”.