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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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Herb,
The Union City (get it right, Herb) fire chief also said that he wasn't South Fulton's chief and that what he would have done doesn't matter.
Since he was logical and factual about it, and since he didn't engage in dishonest debate tactics here, there is no reason for me to "blast him".
That's as silly as your earlier demand that I comment on my feelings on the feelings of other people I don't know.
You want to debate based on emotions. I'll stick to the facts, thanks.
If that's good enough for the guy who said it, it's should be good enough for the rest of us.
"What I like about you is that you get so easily sucked in to the debate, as if what you say is important to any one else but you."
Hypocritical, coming from someone who seems to have made personal attacks on me his mission in life.
The only logical fallacies and bunk I point out in any conversation are to the people that use them. You seem to be unable to debate without them. Stop using those bogus debate tactics and the problem goes away.
Most of the people who have posted their "extinguish it" opinions have done so either out of ignorance of the facts, or out of the opinion that every fire should be extinguished, no matter what the consequences. The ones that have posted out of a mistaken opinion of the facts have generally had the good graces to either admit it or to at least stop repeating their mantra of mistaken facts.
You haven't done that.
When I make a mistake, I apologize for it. I've done that to another poster in this debate, and then you jumped on the bandwagon to bash me for it.
You, on the other hand, have made many demonstrable mistakes - non-factual and inaccurate posts - here, and you haven't apologized for even one of them.
Here's your most recent example: " We share an opinion on the thread......not life changing ideas." Oh, really, Herb? Discussing how fire protection is or is not provided to over 30,000 people isn't a "life changing idea"??? I think the citizens of Obion County would disagree.
Why is that?
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Permalink Reply by Herb Genelly III on
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Ben,
On THIS thread, there was no Life Changing ideas' yet you spew like Limbaugh! Will you point one out to me? Now, on the FF Nation website, there's plenty of great diologe (present company excluded).
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Permalink Reply by FETC on
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Like I originally said, and stand behind, but $75.00 does not pay for the fuel to run the trucks for a few hours at a house fire. If everyone paid the subscription, maybe they would have the funds to survive but it is obvious that "hoping" for the user to pay post fire as some suggest, (even suggesting a greater fine) when it is now reported by other fire chief's that many who get "service for free" refuse to pay the $75.00 fee post services rendered.
Everyone has a heart, some of us just understand that it takes money to fiscally exist, otherwise you are so bad off that your golden heart becomes a liability when your personnel get hurt or injured. They are obviously not paying for workers compensation, life and disability insurance on their members with an $8,000 operating budget.
The change from the soda machine to buy fuel doesn't surprise me. Thats probably a golden heart chief who understands the needs... What is surprising is the doors have remained open for the city taxpayers and paid subscribers for 20 years.
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I'm with you, FETC.
It's astounding that South Fulton and the other fire departments have been able to "keep the doors open" for so long with so little.
As a former Tennessee fire/rescue/EMS/hazmat provider, I can tell you that some agencies, particularly some of the volunteer agencies have indeed "closed the doors" in the past 30 years or so while South Fulton scraped to keep their department open.
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Permalink Reply by Fireslayer960 on
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Ben, I love the way you continue to twist things to fit your own perspective.
First, rant? Not hardly. I was simply pointing out things that are indeed posted here.
Now if I may quote YOU,,,"The same goes for your accusations of "name calling". Either show us some evidence of namecalling, or your accusation is a logical fallacy. A logical fallacy, by definition, is neither factual nor logical."
Oh! But wait, because the insult was not made by the great Ben, then I am attacking you? You were the one who had to stick his nose into a conversation I was having with someone else in the first place! I never said YOU were the one doing the name calling, but YOU were the one who jumped in with your stupid "logical fallacy" comments.
I also get a kick out of, instead of actually going back and verifying whether what I say is true or not, you resort to,OH the numbers are incomplete! LOL
The comment to the Brother from New Zealand WAS below the belt, no matter how you try and sugar coat it!
Officially debunked? How? Because the great Ben says so? I gave you proof of your condescending remarks and instead of addressing them, you use a lame cop-out that posts move. Ok, so posts move, what was on page 14 may now be on page 15, but the post is still there ben, regardless of what page it is on.
Arrogant? No hardly. Funny thing is, with most of your posts and comments, I have nothing to do with them, nor did I say anything about myself. But that is your tactic Ben, cloud this issue with inaccurate and ridiculous statements, like bribery,,,pfft.
The bottom line really is, you toss aside anyone regardless of who they are, if they do not share your viewpoint.
One other point that humors me, you keep coming back to the "Show me proof" that the majority of guys disagree with "Let it burn" Stating, they simply made those comments because, and I quote you again,, Many of the posters here based their "extinguish it" on opinions that were not congruent with the facts. That doesn't exactly make those opinions reliable, and it certainly doesn't make them accurate. Do you watch TV Ben? Do you read a newspaper? Do you surf the internet Ben? I do, and EVERYWHERE I look, I see the same thing, the majority saying, extinguish it, and THEN worry about billing!
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Herb,
Wrong again. At least you're consistent.
This thread goes to the lives of over 30,000 people and the possibility of a change in how Obion County views fire protection. That's certainly a life-changing idea.
Your arguement that it is not is delusional. It flies in the face of the facts.
You're consistent on your views flying in the face of the facts, too.
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Herb,
I didn't blast the Union City Chief over ANY part of his comments, nor do I plan to do so. Your insistence that I should flies in the face of the facts.
The rest of your questions have been answered, ad nauseum, but I'll repeat my answer to one of them.
You base your opinion on the fire chief's feelings. I've told you before, no one feels good about the situation. I've also told you that those feelings are not a valid basis for public policy. So have other posters here.
The fire chief did EXACTLY what he was supposed to do.
He did EXACTLY what the homeowner paid him to do.
He did EXACTLY what the next-door neighbor paid him to do.
You can feel bad about it all you want, but the bottom line is that you don't get to decide how they do it someplace else.
And Herb, the fire threat was controlled by the SFFD. So what's your point on that one, exactly?
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Prove it that 30,000 people are viewing this thread! Prove it that Olbion uses this thread to address their FIre Protection!
You're theory is debunked, since merely a few hundred responses to the OP have even taken place on this Thread. LMACO!!!
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Herb, that's a non-sequitur.
The fact that most of the Obion County residents are not viewing this thread makes the topic of this thread no less life-changing for them.
In fact, the topic of this thread was VERY life-changing for the Cranic family.
All you have to do to understand it is to a) be literate n the English language, b) be open minded, and c) be honest.
You don't seem to understand it. That indicates a failure of one or more of those three things on your part.
And Herb, you once again used a Straw Man logical fallacy, since nowhere did I say that 30,000 people were engaged in this thread. YOU made that statement, then argued the point as if I had said it. That's a classic Straw Man.
You really are unable to debate without just making things up, aren't you?
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So the Uinion City chief said he would have put the fire out,in front of the national media, and you're all hunky dory with that. But I opinionated on a blog that I would have done the same thing, and you react like you are the ONLY living being that can decide what I say???
I only worked for a department with a few hundred FF's, so I don't know everything, but I do know this.....you would have not lasted a second in our station house with that hypocritical thinking!
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I have a question, and I admit, it is a little different as far as being property, and not someones home.
Our department now runs off of an ESD. Now I will not say the majority because I would have to review all of our reports back to January first but, a VAST amount of the fire calls that we get outside of the city, are from farmers, whose combines are on fire, or their fields, barns, tractors, you get the idea. Well, farmers get tax exemptions, so in reality they do not contribute as much as the city people do to the fire service. My question is, with this No pay no Spray thinking, are we supposed to just ignore those farmers? I know our department never will. In fact, back when we had a subscription service, and were doing everything we could think of to keep our doors open, we still responded and extinguished, regardless of whether they were a subscriber or not.
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Herb,
One big difference is that you want to force your opinion on South Fulton FD and how they do business in the county and that the Union City fire chief does not.
Another is that the Union City fire chief has local knowledge and you don't.
Still another is that the Union City didn't engage in logical fallacies and personal attacks with people that have other opinions. You did - repeatedly.
And Herb, your belief that I would "have not lasted a second in our station hosue with that hypocritical thinking" is B.S. on three counts.
1) My thinking is not hypocritical, based on the differences in how the Union City chief and you present your cases. That's an important difference.
2) How long I would or would not have lasted in your station house isn't pertinent to this conversation, since it's hypothetical. You don't even have a station house now; you're retired. You have a former station house.
3) It's pretty insulting to your former firehouse mates to think that they would have been as illogical as you've been in this discussion, don't you think? Surely you didn't have an entire firehouse that intentionally ignored the facts when forming their opinions.
Then there's the little issue of context when you shout "MORAL" and the Union City chief avoided making blanket statements like that. Could it be that unlike you, he knows that statement is unsupportable?
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