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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.
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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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Billy,
That's not a safe assumption. I'm guessing that they don't have the bandwidth to support the huge number of hits that their site has probably been getting, and that the site crashed or was shut down based on the inadequate bandwidth.
Remember, South Fulton is a small town of 2,500 residents with a very small city hall staff.
The last thing I saw on their Town Hall staff said that it had 4 employees.
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Permalink Reply by Billy Lilly on
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Actually we do fundraising in both countys. Plus the town. Plus notice the wording. The first of those conditions is that the sponsoring agency MUST be a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. Municipalities, by definition, cannot also be 501(c)3 nonprofits. A fire department is a none profit orgization. Are bingo isnt just towns people or are surrounding area. We have bingo players from all over. Same go's for lawn partys, and raffle.
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Well tell me why they shoudnt try to have more funds then $8,000 a year.
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Permalink Reply by Vic Silverfish on
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Never!
Personally, I think Herb and Ben are the same person, writing opposing posts from a secure location in a cave beneath the Nevada desert somewhere.
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Because that's what they are limited to by their available funding sources.
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Billy,
The City of South Fulton, Tennessee operates a municipal fire department.
By Tennessee state law, neither the city nor any of the city's agencies, including the fire department, can be a 502(c)3 nonprofit because municipalties and nonprofits are chartered differently. The fire department can either be a city department or a non-profit, but not both.
Their rules are simply different than the ones for your department.
You have bingo players "from all over".
South Fulton can't have bingo at all - it is illegal to have charitable bingo games in Tennessee, as the excerpt from their state law posted above clearly states.
Tennessee has a state education lottery. They don't want anyone else running games of chance that compete with their state lottery, and that is clearly spelled out in the link I posted above.
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How can you say there limited. When there not trying to help themselves. There limited becuase they choose not to try to do somthing to raise money.
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Virginia has a lottery too. But they sure as heck dont limit bingo. But theres other ways besides bingo. Cater dinners. Do some fundraisers. Ben i'm starting to wonder if you arent the fire chief down there.
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Billy,
That's not accurate. As I've previously told you, they DO something to raise money. They collect taxes inside the city limits and they have subscription contracts in the county.
They can't raise money in the same way your department does because it is ILLEGAL for them to do so, based upon their state laws.
The only way they can do the kind of fundraising you suggest is to break the law.
I can't imagine that you want them to break the law.
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Like i said catering dinners isnt illegal. doing a boot drive in the county in the town. Isnt breaking the law. Doing a little work dont hurt no one.
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Billy,
When South Fulton, Tennessee becomes part of Virginia, maybe the fire department will start running bingo games. Until then, they can't, because it's illegal in Tennessee.
Why should firefighters that already volunteer their services in addition to their jobs, their families, their churches, and their civic groups have to spend additional time in fundraising at all, particularly when their system works just as it is designed?
And Billy, you were doing such a great job of staying on the topic until now, and then you stooped to a personal attack.
It's pretty easy for you to sit at a keyboard and tell South Fulton how they should do things.
Why don't you move to South Fulton and help out in the way you demand that they do it? That would be the civic-minded thing for you to do, right?
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Do they do collect the money. Or is it mailed to the town. so no there not actually doing anything.
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