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Tennessee Firefighters Let Home Burn Over Subscription Issue
JASON HIBBS
WPSD
Reprinted with Permission
OBION COUNTY, Tenn. - Imagine your home catches fire but the local fire department won't respond, then watches it burn. That's exactly what happened to a local family tonight.
Related
- WPSD: Firefighters Watch as Home Burns to the Ground
- WPSD: More Fallout Following House Fire
- USAToday: Firefighters watch house burn because owner hadn't paid $...
- MSNBC: No pay, no spray: Firefighters let home burn
FireEMSBlogs.com Updates
A local neighborhood is furious after firefighters watched as an Obion County, Tennessee, home burned to the ground.
The homeowner, Gene 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.
Each year, Obion County residents must pay $75 if they want fire protection from the city of South Fulton. But the Cranicks did not pay.
The mayor said if homeowners don't pay, they're out of luck.
This fire went on for hours because garden hoses just wouldn't put it out. It wasn't until that fire spread to a neighbor's property, that anyone would respond.
Turns out, the neighbor had paid the fee.
"I thought they'd come out and put it out, even if you hadn't paid your $75, but I was wrong," said Gene Cranick.
Because of that, not much is left of Cranick's house.
They called 911 several times, and initially the South Fulton Fire Department would not come.
The Cranicks told 9-1-1 they would pay firefighters, whatever the cost, to stop the fire before it spread to their house.
"When I called I told them that. My grandson had already called there and he thought that when I got here I could get something done, I couldn't," Paulette Cranick.
It was only when a neighbor's field caught fire, a neighbor who had paid the county fire service fee, that the department responded. Gene Cranick asked the fire chief to make an exception and save his home, the chief wouldn't.
We asked him why.
He wouldn't talk to us and called police to have us escorted off the property. Police never came but firefighters quickly left the scene. Meanwhile, the Cranick home continued to burn.
We asked the mayor of South Fulton if the chief could have made an exception.
"Anybody that's not in the city of South Fulton, it's a service we offer, either they accept it or they don't," Mayor David Crocker said.
Friends and neighbors said it's a cruel and dangerous city policy but the Cranicks don't blame the firefighters themselves. They blame the people in charge.
"They're doing their job," Paulette Cranick said of the firefighters. "They're doing what they are told to do. It's not their fault."
To give you an idea of just how intense the feelings got in this situation, soon after the fire department returned to the station, the Obion County Sheriff's Department said someone went there and assaulted one of the firefighters.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Ben Waller on
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writertee,
"It's an economy in which we have been faced with situations we couldn't have anticipated."
Now YOU are making this about money? Because, as you know, the economy is completely about money. What a completely hypocritical statement.
When you say that I would have posted "your wrongs", I already have - repeatedly.
Here's an example:
"writertee,
Here are two statements you made in adjacent posts...
"Someday it will be you or someone you love." That specifically discusses me and mine.
"I didn't tell you about you and yours."
Umm, yes you did, as cited immediately above.
Your denial is as bogus as your accusations.
Your other statements here share that lack of credibility.
It's pretty funny that you think I'm not respectable. That's not your first personal attack on me, and it's another in your list of your ad hominems here.
And writertee, given your demonstrable playing fast-and-loose with the facts and the truth here, when you come out of that Bizzarro World in which you live to say that I'm not respectable, that's as close as it gets to ironclad proof that I am very respectable.
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"There is nothing anyone in Tennessee or in this county can do about the outrage of some of the rest of the country. "
Apparently, "some of the rest of the country" shares your penchant for using bogus claims based upon misinformation and half truths in order to make a point that bears no resemblence to reality.
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George,
The national economy of New Zealand depends heavily upon tourist dollars, per the link I provided elsewhere in this discussion. That means that New Zealand doesn't depend on taxes from its own citizens for 100% of its revenue. New Zealand can afford to subsidize fire services for tourists because the tourists subsidize a larger percentage of the gross national product than the fire services consume. Advantage: New Zealand citizens.
Obion County, on the other hand, doesn't have a tourist economy to help its citizens pay for services. Disadvantage: Obion County.
That's why I suggested that a New Zealander who sounded as if he was insisting that Obion County adopt a similar system to New Zealand's wasn't making sense. Obion County isn't subsidized by lots of tourist money and they have chosen to keep their local taxes low instead of funding fire protection.
It is their right to do so.
It is not the City of South Fulton's responsibility to subsidize county fire protection without any compensation.
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Exactly my point to those who don't understand - or who don't WANT to understand - about this issue being way bigger than this one incident.
The problem with telling the fire department that they have to respond/extinguish regardless of "who paid" is that if this kind of free ridership is allowed, pretty soon that's all you have an NO ONE fits the "who paid" category. At that point, then no one has fire protection instead of just the scofflaws.
This boils down to the fact that South Fulton is taking a beating for trying to help their county neighbors who would otherwise have NO fire protection. Letting one scofflaw stew in a mess of his own making isn't immoral, unethical, or wrong. It's just the system Obion County's residents obviously want going to a logical conclusion.
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Generalized platitudes like this are meaningless and don't provide the slightest practical assistance in actually solving the problem.
There's an old firehouse saying about wishes that says if you hold out both hands and fill one with wishes and the other with B.S., guess which one will fill up first? Hint: it's not the wishes.
Those of us who are actually firefighters have to do practical things to not only run the call we're on right now, but to ensure that we can protect people in the future. We sometimes have to make choices that are not easy in the short term, but that are the best option in the long term.
That is EXACTLY what the South Fulton Fire Department did, and they should be commended for having the courage to stick up for their policy, despite the storm of ill-informed opinion it generated.
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Permalink Reply by kara-lee allen on
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i dont know. sad for the people who's house it is, but ppl seem to think that fire dept's are free... training is free, apparatus is free, firefighters are free. this was a hard lesson, but a lesson for sure. i bet everyone who lives around there pays their fee now.....
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Permalink Reply by Jack/dt on
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Actually, it's not at all like mutual aid. It was service by subscription. It's been covered over and over, in this discussion and other related ones. It really helps to have a working grasp of all the facts rather than just an opinion founded in little more than a cursory examination of the issue. But if it works for you...
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Permalink Reply by Art "ChiefReason" Goodrich on
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The situation that has been discussed on all the major TV networks and cable talk shows, radio and internet discussion boards is "dumb"?
You must be a minimalist.
And wrong.
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Permalink Reply by Jayne C. Eernisse - Gates on
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All I can say is WOW! How can someone let that happen? How can they call themselves a fire department if they do that to their community? The last time I heard it was the fire department's duty to protect the community they serve and prevent fire. Would they have done the same thing if there was someone trapped inside the structure? And is it just me or was the mayor also on the fire department. That's just f*cked up!
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Permalink Reply by WestPhilly on
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Jayne,
How far beyond the headlines have you looked with regard to this incident?
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Permalink Reply by Eric Stamey on
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So Obion Co. has a Sheriff's Dept, why don't they have a rural county fire service? To me the issue is with the Obion County Mayor not South Fulton. What happen's when South Fulton commits it's services outside the city on a fire, whose homeowner's haven't paid for the subcription, and a fire breaks out inside the city? The legal ramifications would have been ten fold. These homeowners need to be knocking on the county mayors door or at the next county meeting.
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"...why don't they have a rural county fire service."
Because the citizens have repeatedly elected county commissioners that will not vote for a county fire department, and every time the subject is brought up at a public meeting, the attendees are overwhelmingly against a county fire department.
South Fulton doesn't have a problem if they're on one fire and a second one breaks out - they just call their neighbors for mutual aid.
The homeowners are knocking on the county mayor's and county commissioners' doors right now asking that their taxes are not increased. That, not fire service, is their priority. As difficult as that is to belive for a lot of firefighters, it's their right.
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