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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
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Permalink Reply by Ben Waller on
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Mario,
I live in South Carolina. I don't want to pay California taxes. Guess what, I don't because I don't live in their state.
SFFD is a tax-supported city FD. The fire occurred in an unincorporated area of Obion County. The Obion County citizens don't pay any South Fulton taxes, because, guess what - they don't live in that city.
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Permalink Reply by Art "ChiefReason" Goodrich on
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I ran for trustee to keep guys like me in line.
In Illinois, by law, fire protection district board of trustees are responsible for the fire protection in their fire districts. That means, setting policies. Anything that the fire department does, such as develop SOGs, is with the approval of the board. New members and those chosen as officers are with the approval of the board. The chief is responsible for the day to day operation, but he ANSWERS to the board.
So, is it clear that the governing boards and NOT the chiefs manage the fire department/fire districts?
Now; our policies DO have some wiggle room built into them, but if anyone on the department violates a known policy, such as responding to a call while under the influence, be assured that discipline will be taken.
Also; I don't care if TV cameras and reporters are at the scene or not.
We don't change what we do simply for the press corps.
We don't change what we do because of someone's personal opinions.
And we don't change what we do if it doesn't improve the service that we provide to our residents.
THEY have determined what level of service they want and it is our job to provide that service.
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Permalink Reply by FETC on
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Russ, if we do this professionally (whether paid or volunteer) we all have a boss. Now vollies always say they demand the same respect but some have the attitude that "I will do as I want because I am not getting paid" Here we have a volunteer chief following his boss's orders. Can't slam the brother. I respect him. If you don't follow orders in any fire department you should be disciplined or terminated depending on the nature or severity of the event. Unfavorable decisions or orders happen everyday in the fire service. The difference is do you follow them or not? The city established a "pay for service" fee to an area of the county for which has no fire department, no fire tax impact, no way to be protected by themselves. They (the residents) chose to live there because it was cheaper. The PD analogy is lame, their minimal taxes do include a fee for police protection. But the taxes DO NOT include any fire protection services. That was their own personal responsibility. Same as if this guy chose to not have any fire insurance either. Not mine or South Fulton's problem, it was this guys personal responsibility.
I would like to discuss the video footage. This was highly edited. They didn't respond initially. Dispatch told the homeowner on the first and multiple calls - Sorry NO, he didn't pay and your not on the response list. The footage that everyone is so emotional about is the work of some college intern making it look worse than it was. They came after the neighbor called stating the field was now on fire and they were concerned with their home being caught up as an exposure. That caller was a paid subscriber.
I wasn;t there but I would guess, the double wide mobile home was well involved and pretty much gone before any "standing around" occurred.
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Permalink Reply by Richard Armstrong on
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John who is to say the guyeven has fire insurance and like I said before if he did have insurance will they even honor this claim because he did not pay 75 dollars to protect his home when it was offered to him.If im his insurance company I would probably tell him to pound salt like the department did because if he'd have paid the fee he would have not lost everything
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It has been reported that his insurance company has already made some payments to the homeowner.
Apparently the local insurers have started to figure out that they're going to lose big bucks if they don't enforce fire subscriptions as part of obtaining fire insurance.
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They did. The protected their subscriber's property exactly as they were supposed to.
They had no duty to act for a non-subscriber. Obion County makes fire protection an individual responsibility, not a collective responsiblity as their incorporated cities do. Mr. Cranick, not the FD, failed in his responsibility.
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Russ, if we do this professionally (whether paid or volunteer) we all have a boss. Now vollies always say they demand the same respect but some have the attitude that "I will do as I want because I am not getting paid" Here we have a volunteer chief following his boss's orders. Can't slam the brother. I respect him. If you don't follow orders in any fire department you should be disciplined or terminated depending on the nature or severity of the event. Unfavorable decisions or orders happen everyday in the fire service. The difference is do you follow them or not? The city established a "pay for service" fee to an area of the county for which has no fire department, no fire tax impact, no way to be protected by themselves. They (the residents) chose to live there because it was cheaper. The PD analogy is lame, their minimal taxes do include a fee for police protection. But the taxes DO NOT include any fire protection services. That was their own personal responsibility. Same as if this guy chose to not have any fire insurance either. Not mine or South Fulton's problem, it was this guys personal responsibility.
I would like to discuss the video footage. This was highly edited. They didn't respond initially. Dispatch told the homeowner on the first and multiple calls - Sorry NO, he didn't pay and your not on the response list. The footage that everyone is so emotional about is the work of some college intern making it look worse than it was. They came after the neighbor called stating the field was now on fire and they were concerned with their home being caught up as an exposure. That caller was a paid subscriber.
I wasn't there but I would guess, the double wide mobile home was well involved, pretty much or completely gone before any "FD standing around" occurred.
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It won't do anything at all for the unincorporated areas of Obion County.
The NFPA standards only apply to places that actually have a fire department and Obion County has no fire department.
The NFPA standards don't require anyone to actually have a fire department.
The NFPA standards don't require a fire department to respond to every call for service.
The NFPA standards don't require extinguishment of every fire.
Those things are left up to the local government and the local citizens, except for the last one, which is left up to the incident commander.
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It's not a B.S. policy. It's exactly what the Obion County citizens have indicated they want - over, and over, and over. In fact, that's what they've indicated at every local election for at least the past 20 years.
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Permalink Reply by Herb Genelly III on
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Ben,
Today I read some interesting comments about this incident on a self described Libertarian /Conservative Blog (Ricochet). ( Lots of passion and points by civilian folks)
One of the interesting comments from a poster, was that they felt the FD was at fault over this fire, but not for the reasons myself, or anyone in the "Blame the FD camp" has taken.
They poster felt it was the FD's fault by offering fire protection outside of the city limits in the first place. The theory was (and I'm paraphrasing here) that if a government entity can only provide limited services to a community via a subscription service, yet hold a sort of "Monopoly" as the only system that can be put in place in that community (it appears the TN has specific laws regarding some aspects of public safety delivery), that they stifle private organizations from doing the job (Rural Metro like), and/or keep the unincorporated areas from figuring out a system on their own.
In other words, the poster felt that if he's a Tax Payer, and his fire crew has to leave his community to even stand by while a non-subscribers home is burning, that it's not right. I didn't mention this to be argumentative in any way, nor to I agree or disagree with the posters comments. I simply thought it was an interesting concept.
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Sorry Ben I kinda got away from this Tennessee stuff cause it was driving me frigin nuts that people can't just use their melon and relize that the FF's did nothing wrong here and that they should just realize that and let it go and if they wanted to bitch about something they should rent a damn bus and all drive down there and go protest at City hall to jack everyones taxes up and build a couple more fire halls and fill them with trucks and guys.I'll bet the people down there would realize after the first tax bill they got would kick em in the ass.Then they would be bitchin about paying a grand a year more instead of 75 stinkin dollars.
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The only injustice here is that the FF's have to deal with stupid people not doing the responsible thing by paying and then being bashed for doing what they are to do.
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