The Social Network & Community JUST for Firefighters
IAFF Condemns Tennessee House Fire Policy
TODD FAULKNER
WPSD
Reprinted with Permission
PADUCAH - A local fire department's decision to let a home burn is attracting national attention and sparking national debate.
A firefighters group is lashing out against members of their own. The International Association of Fire Fighters is condemning the South Fulton Fire Department for their actions last week.
Fire crews refused to put out a house fire in Obion County, Tennessee, because the owner did not pay the $75 coverage fee. The Association's general president released a statement Tuesday on the city's policy of subscription fire service.
The IAFF statement reads, in part, "We condemn South Fulton's ill-advised, unsafe policy. Professional, career fire fighters shouldn't be forced to check a list before running out the door to see which homeowners have paid up. They get in their trucks and go."
The statement also reads, "Because of South Fulton's pay-to-play policy, fire fighters were ordered to stand and watch a family lose its home."
Todd Cranick, son of Gene Cranick, tells Local 6 that his parents have received several thousand dollars from the insurance company to cover immediate costs. Cranick went on to say that the insurance plans on covering all damage and property losses. Right now, there is no fund set up to help the Cranick family.
The IAFF is headquartered in Washington, D.C., representing nearly 300,000 full-time professional firefighters and paramedics.
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Ben Waller on
-
Actually, a subscription is not "taxes". It is a CONTRACT, because it is voluntary. Taxes are involuntary.
The subscriber has the right to opt out of a subscription, which is exactly what happened here.
If you don't pay your taxes, eventually a lien will be put on the property and the government to whom the taxes are owed will void the owner's deed, take the property, and sell it at public auction.
Subscriptions don't work like that. If you don't pay your fire subscription, no government is going to put a lien on the property or sell it. The only risk is not having fire protection.
Herb, the reason that people who have a fire inside the city limits but who don't pay their taxes receive services is because the rest of the taxpayers - by paying their taxes - have agreed to subsidize them. It has nothing to do with "Ethically/Morally" - it's simply a public policy decision regarding economics.
Further, there are subscription departments in Tennessee that are not government departments. These include Rural/Metro (private sector) and several volunteer departments that are in the non-profit sector. They have a variety of rules for non-subscribers, that in some cases include no extinguishment for non-subscribers.
You keep framing this as simply a Moral/Ethical decision when there are clearly other factors at work. You also assume that the Moral/Ethical choice is to subsidize Free Riders. That choice may seem Moral/Ethical for the non=subscriber whose home burned, but that choice is clearly Immoral/Unethical when it comes to fairness to the other 30,000 or so county residents who paid their subscriptions.
Subscription contracts are a very, very different animal than taxes.
-
Permalink Reply by John Crabbe on
-
And the IAFF just sits by and watches while the county allows it's residents to opt out of fire protection while criticizing the South Fulton fire department for trying to provide coverage to as many out-of-district residents as they can
And just would you want the IAFF to do? They have no say in how a dept establishes itself, nor how it does business. Also, if you actually read the IAFF statement the IAFF is NOT criticizing the FFs, but instead the policy of subscription for fire services....which means they are criticizing the elected officials who promote the use of subscriptions.
-
Permalink Reply by FETC on
-
So Herb, you decide well I am going to save some money this year and gamble on my health insurance premiums, no screw it - I am not going to pay it so you cancel it.
You unfortunately get into a hiking accident and need surgery to repair your body. You in your cheap wisdom drive yourself instead of calling for an ambulance, you arrive at the ER, do you expect to meet up with an insurance agent in the parking lot to pay a premium before you go inside?
The true costs of actual hospitalization have bankrupted many good people, so would the fact of providing this freeloader with on the spot, contract with a larger penalty fee for fire suppression services like $10,000.
Hospitals have turned people away for lack of funding, and then again there are some community hospitals who have to accept non-payers as that is how they are set up to run.
Should the taxpayers of South Fulton have a community hospital mentality? No otherwise the economic engine would seize due to the lack of funding to exist.
-
Permalink Reply by Herb Genelly III on
-
No hospital can turn away a patient in a "life threatening" situation, so it's not the best example. Also, what if a fire occurs on a "subscribers" property, but spreads to a non-subscribers home, either due to tactical error or close proximity. Do they just let it burn?
Now, lots of folks are using the Car Insurance analogy, where you can't pay after the wreck. I understand that. But a car wreck is a sudden, immediate event, causing all the damage in an instant.
So, you can't call the insurance company (in the event you don't have coverage) in the process of an accident to ask for coverage on the currently undamaged part..........but it's possible you can on your home.
The fire starts in in your yard. Hey......911....got a fire in my yard, I'm afraid it's going to spread to my home. Well sir..........your home isn't covered. Yeah....I know.....but can I pay my $75 now, because my home isn't on fire yet. 911...........no...sorry!
How about this. FD is on scene of a fire. The exposure home is not covered. The exposure homeowner is worried the fire will affect his home. Can they pay the bill on the scene, in the event something goes wrong? It's no different that if the home owner walked into the fire house, paid the bill, and 5 minutes later the neighbors home caught fire, and posed a risk.
Yeah...........it's a bunch of what ifs..........but the only reason that guys home burned is because it wasn't tactically important to put it out. Meaning, it didn't pose an immediate threat to paid subscribers. Yeah...he didn't pay, and he reaped the consequences....but how can you have a policy, if it can't be equally enforced to all non-paying folks?
-
-
C'mon man are you serious here? If fire was encroaching on a non-paying subscriber from a paid subscriber, then that is an exposure to be protected, that simple.
how can you have a policy, if it can't be equally enforced to all non-paying folks?
Which means that other fires would take the same course as this and then you will have people making uninformed, emotional comments of how these are not real FFs and so forth. Calling because your home is on fire and you did not pay for service is one thing, there is no duty to act. Fire from a paid subscriber encroaching your property is about protecting exposures.
-
-
Why would they (FF's) risk "injury", and tie up resources, as others on this post have pointed out, by attacking any fire on a non-subscribers home? Truthfully man, if the fire spread from a subscribers home, to a non-subscribers, and the IC determined if the exposure burned, and didn't pose a threat to any additional exposures, why put it out, based on the current policy? You can't answer that, becasue you know what that leads to.......going against the policy.
What if they only have enough initial FF's/Equipment to put hose lines to protect one exposure:.....to the left...a paid subscriber....to the right....a NON-Payer.............but, the paid subscribers home has a shake single roof, pretty dilapidated, and other issues making it difficult to save? The Non-Payer's home has clay tile and stucco...and is new?
Also, if they don't respond to a non-subscriber, that fire presumably burns bigger, and poses a greater threat to a paid subscribers home...right? Why wait until the conflagration grows, instead of putting out the fire?
My point John, and I think you can agree, is that the Policy can't be uniformly applied, because of the tactics/strategy involved in fighting every fire. This isn't like a STOP sign, where the law is very clear....Everyone (non-emergency) has to stop, to avoid an accident. But their are exceptions to the law........which is precisely my point, in that, this is not a Black & White situation, as others seem to want to believe. Emotion has nothing to do with it, common sense does.
Fianlly, I'm not defending the homeowner, or criticizing the FF's. And I know it's been pointed out that this is what the Taxpayers want, by refusing to allow the commission to raise a special tax.........but the system is a nightmare (something a lot of residents didn't understand, as you can see on video clips), the chiefs of Olbion Co. are on record saying they DON'T, like it, want it, or can accept it (like 5 departments in the county who have simply refused to accept the subscription system)....but it is what it is.
My whole issue has been not to point out the law/rules, but to point out what's right (in my mind anyway).
-
-
No, the point is that if there is a fire, the RECEO acronym should come into play...RESCUE, EXPOSURES, confine, extinguish, overhaul. If the fire is in a paid subscriber's property and threatens a non-paid person's property, there is still a duty to protect the exposures.....just like there is a duty to try and rescue a savable life in a non-paid structure.
Bottom line is that you can play the what if game all you want, the only ones to answer the question are those who enforce the policy. Personally I feel subscription based services if a crock and a spineless decision of elected officials to have such policies and a moronic, greedy, decision of residents of such areas to allow such services. Just because policy hasn't always been enforced in the past, doesn't mean the policy can't be nor shouldn't be enforced......If you don't pay for the service, then don't expect the service to be there.
-
-
Well Herb it is apparent that you are strongly opinionated guy that is not going to see anyone else's point of view. At your retirement party, I bet it was one big party.
I know of privately funded hospitals / doctors who turn away patients for lack of funding. Then again community hospitals that are supported by taxpayers, the government, and such through grants, cannot.
Yeah...........it's a bunch of what ifs..........but the only reason that guys home burned is because it wasn't tactically important to put it out.(end quote)
Once again, personal opinion and wrong.... you see the only reason this guys house actually burned without fire suppression intervention was the free loader, cheap skate, chose to not pay the $75.00.
That is actual fact.
-
-
John,
Nice job, and strategically correct.
-
-
Yeah. Actually, I received an award, one that has only been given about a dozen times in the 100 year history of the department. At times, I was the only FF/Medic serving a 300 sq. mile district. On my OFF days, I would get phone calls for the duty officer, begging me to get out of bed a 3 a.m. in the morning to respond for medical aids, for folks that nearly 1/2 the time had no insurance, nor a way to pay their bill................but I did go.
Our district was the poorest funded in the county, and at times, we had to beg, borrow and steal equipment to survive. We had a 20% unemployment rate (long before the economic downturn of today), and high alcohol/drug abuse rates due to the indigent population. Our department was the lowest paid in the county too.
The award I received was a Lifetime Membership Award, for always going above and beyond the scope of my job. So my "backwards" way of thinking, meaning putting out fires for scofflaws in and out of our district, treating indigents in and out of our district, and trying to make our community a better place was appreciated where I came from.
It doesn't make it better than your way. Right now...........I'm off to donating my services to our local school district, because they have serious funding issues, due to folks walking away from their mortgage obligations. But it's solving a problem to help the school, and not laying blame on the people who lied on their loan docs.
-
-
"Put out the fire then pursue the funds" could be construed as extortion on the part of the fire department if they don't have an explicit, written policy for doing that prior to the fire.
Are you seriously advocating for something that could be construed as extortion?
-
-
Mario,
I appreciate your civility even though we disagree, and disagree I do.
"Subscription fees for emergency service should be illegal." Why? In this case, if the subscriptions were illegal, the unincorporated county area would have NO fire protection.
The arrangement is just between the city FD and the homeowner, so your point about "easier to justify" doesn't make sense. The county has elected to not provide county-based fire protection based on what the citizens overwhelmingly want, and they have nothing to do with the subscription contracts signed by SFFD and the individual property owners.
The SFFD's obligation didn't change in any way once they arrived on scene. They carried out their contractual obligations to the letter.
It's about what's right all the time, not just once we arrive on scene. What SFFD did was right, based upon local law, contract law, and their widely-known practice.
How do you know what the South Fulton firefighters wanted to do?
More importantly, how do you know that they were "inherently" right?
I know firefighters who inherently wanted to have fun with horseplay and pranks around the station - and injured themselves or other firefighters, createing medical expenses and huge extra costs to the taxpayers.
I know firefighters who inherently wanted to drive their vehicle after drinking excessive amounts of alcohol.
I know firefighters who wanted to milk te overtime system for time-and-a-half for time they didn't work.
That doesn't mean that all firefighters are inherently looking for things that are bad, but it does mean that "what firefighters inherently want" isn't a 100% reliable basis for establishing public policy.
What the IAFF is doing is grandstanding, pure and simple. They want mandatory tax-supported systems in order to create more firefighter jobs and more IAFF membership, pure and simple. That's not inherently either a bad thing or a good thing, depending upon your views. That also means that what the IAFF said isn't reliable, because frankly, Harold S. didn't have all the facts before the IAFF jumped into the fray.
© 2024 Created by Firefighter Nation WebChief.
Powered by
