EPTFirefighters let house burn due no fee payment - Page 30
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Disregard
China10252 Posts
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NET
United States703 Posts
I think the feds need to have a look into it, because to me that entire incident seems corrupt and avoidable. | ||
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Ordained
United States779 Posts
Disgusting scam artists. | ||
Myles
United States5162 Posts
On October 06 2010 15:10 Ordained wrote: "Oh your 5 year old is burning to death inside? Oh well you didnt give me $75 for something that Taxes you already pay covers." Disgusting scam artists. Of course then you read the article and realized he doesn't pay taxes to the fire department. | ||
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Droodjerky
United States76 Posts
Now, I think we should move onto what systems would be better to have in place. My idea is that a country wide Fire Dept should be implemented. So that everyone would be covered and no one would have to worry about their houses burning down. Property Taxes should go down and Federal Taxes would go up (ever so slightly). Sure, the logistics go further than just taxes. But this is why there is public discourse. The competing systems can be discussed and improved upon before implemented. | ||
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TwentyAPM
United States17 Posts
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Alventenie
United States2147 Posts
On October 06 2010 15:26 TwentyAPM wrote: Rural areas don't have good pressure and many don't have hoses, they have wells. They could probably bucket brigade water.. but that's fairly useless. What was on fire in the shed makes a large difference too, water in the amounts they could get may have only spread it. Most trucks can draft water from a pond and use the engine itself to provide pressure. With a tanker truck + portable pond you can have plenty of water as long as there is a natural source (decent size pond or larger) within minutes of the fire. | ||
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TwentyAPM
United States17 Posts
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MiraMax
Germany532 Posts
On October 06 2010 07:26 Zzoram wrote: Guys, legal liability is a HUGE DEAL. This is the US of A remember. In this country a robber can sue the home owner for having an unsafe home if he injures himself in the act of robbery. Everyone has policies to cover their ass from litigation. If there is any agreement which the firedepartment can have with its "regular customers" outside city limits, which allows them to put out fires there without fearing legal liability for water damage (which apparently works), then the same agreement can be filed before the fire was fought. The same system is already in place for ambulances afaik. This legal argument is just lazy in my opinion. On October 06 2010 12:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: That's not how insurance companies work, or else they'd make no money off of 99% of their customers. They capitalize on probability and risk. And besides, the guy didn't want to pay $75 to keep his house safe. What makes you think he'd want to pay "an exorbitant amount of money" afterwards? To him, his house wasn't worth $75. That's his decision, and he's gotta live with it. And what if he couldn't afford the "exorbitant amount of money" afterwards? Gonna throw him in jail for not being able to afford an optional fee that he didn't want? That's simply not possible. Gonna take away his house? Oh, the irony  Funny that just one post above you stress the importance of reading the article and just in your next post you forget your own advice... Asking for an insurance fee, but if you don't pay then not allowing any access to the service itself!?! That's not how an insurance works! Whatever the city sold was NOT an insurance. | ||
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randombum
United States2378 Posts
On October 06 2010 15:58 MiraMax wrote: Asking for an insurance fee, but if you don't pay then not allowing any access to the service itself!?! That's not how an insurance works! Whatever the city sold was NOT an insurance. It's not insurance but it's exactly how insurance works. People pool money together so that no one person has to handle a large financial burden by his/her self. If you get sick and then go "oh now I'll pay any amount, please cover me for insurance" you don't get it because you haven't been paying into the pool of money and only want to extract from it. The same way the firefighter's work. Sure, you can go to a hospital and pay a shit ton of money, and you can't really do that with firefighters, but that's because there are hospital's who are willing to take care of people without insurance, there are no fire departments willing to work off case-by-case basis alone. Since most people are not stupid enough to neglect fire insurance there's only 1 in a thousand people like this dude who lost his house who would ever hire a private Fire truck vs calling the city fire truck cause they bought "insurance" for fire safety. So if he wants to have access to fire safety without paying into the insurance version, he would have to fund and train an entire fire department solely out of his own pocket, or I dunno he could perhaps buy insurance like a smart person would. The fire department did not dis allow him access to a private fire company to save his house, but simply there is no private fire departments because its too ineffective to run that way. | ||
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MiraMax
Germany532 Posts
On October 06 2010 16:39 randombum wrote: It's not insurance but it's exactly how insurance works. People pool money together so that no one person has to handle a large financial burden by his/her self. If you get sick and then go "oh now I'll pay any amount, please cover me for insurance" you don't get it because you haven't been paying into the pool of money and only want to extract from it. The same way the firefighter's work. Sure, you can go to a hospital and pay a shit ton of money, and you can't really do that with firefighters, but that's because there are hospital's who are willing to take care of people without insurance, there are no fire departments willing to work off case-by-case basis alone. Since most people are not stupid enough to neglect fire insurance there's only 1 in a thousand people like this dude who lost his house who would ever hire a private Fire truck vs calling the city fire truck cause they bought "insurance" for fire safety. So if he wants to have access to fire safety without paying into the insurance version, he would have to fund and train an entire fire department solely out of his own pocket, or I dunno he could perhaps buy insurance like a smart person would. The fire department did not dis allow him access to a private fire company to save his house, but simply there is no private fire departments because its too ineffective to run that way. This is a misconception. It is not at all how an insurance works and I challenge you to name any insurance that works like this. Insurance means: You pay fees -> you get compensation, you don't pay fees -> you don't get compensation. It is instead how a subscription based service works: You pay -> you get service, you don't pay -> you don't get service. It's not rocket science. To me, two things seem rather obvious: (1) Firefighting should not be organised as a flatrate subscription based service without an instrument for emergency calls (and I doubt any private firefighting company would set up such a ridiculous business model) (2) Firefighters who watch a fire instead of fighting it (or any person with the means and training to aid reasonably) act incorrectly | ||
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Runnin
208 Posts
However, this system is certainly better than having no fire department at all, which is exactly what would happen if you were able to pay a large lump sum of money whenever your house caught fire. If there were no fires for a while, the fire departments would run out of money pretty quickly. Mahnini explained it very well earlier in the thread. If I had to guess, I'd say that some people in this area prefer having this system because they don't think their house will ever catch fire, so their local government set this up. This community needs to drop the moronic gambler's mentality, stop trying to get lucky and not have to pay for fire services, and pass whatever laws it needs to to make paying the fire department mandatory. + Show Spoiler + On October 05 2010 17:26 mahnini wrote: it's not the same as getting your car fixed without insurance at all. there is no alternative. you either A) pay for insurance and be covered or B) not pay and not be covered you either A) pay to sustain a fire dept. or B) not pay and have your house burn with your analogy sure you can still pay to get your car fixed but you can't pay the insurance to cover your accident after the fact because the insurance companies would be unsustainable if that were the case. the insurance companies and fire department rely on the money from people who are paying and whose houses are not catching on fire in order to carry out their function which is protect people who are paying and whose houses ARE catching on fire. Also, it was rather infuriating reading all of the ignorant posts from people who seem to have been itching to take potshots at the USA. Just remember when you read some "stupid American" post idiotic drivel about Canada, Germany, NZ, etc. that you are no better if you've done the same here. | ||
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randombum
United States2378 Posts
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foxmeep
Australia2337 Posts
This guy was simply never given the option to have his house put out. And that is what all the fuss is about. How can you have a fire department REFUSE to put out a fire if they were offered fair compensation? Especially once they are right fucking there. How can anyone not see how inherently immoral that is... Sure you have costs for running a fire department, but I guarantee that putting out a few houses that didn't pay and footing a bill isn't going to send you bankrupt. Most people will still pay the small fee, just like most people will still pay for car insurance they NEVER use, even though it ends up costing them x2 the cost of the car over it's lifetime. | ||
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pikkumyy
Finland58 Posts
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Ordained
United States779 Posts
On October 06 2010 15:11 Myles wrote: Of course then you read the article and realized he doesn't pay taxes to the fire department. The event was dubbed "pay for spray" by MSNBC host Keith Olbermann. It's a chilling vision of what could play out in a third world America, where paying taxes isn't enough to cover basic services. Yes, I read it Those "firefighters" should not receive any money from the state if they refuse to help a taxpayer. This is disgusting. | ||
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kXn
254 Posts
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Number41
United States130 Posts
If the city declared a policy that it would put out all fires; the $75 fee, pursuant to state law, would likely be regarded as insurance. The city fire dept would then have to apply for the necessary licenses, etc., needed to establish an insurance policy thus increasing firefighting costs and city liability. Also, the city can not establish law in places other than its city, and would likely be unable to collect (in many scenarios) if it were to try to bill an outsider the cost of putting out the fire. All that said, the Cpt. should have been a good man and ordered his men to put out the fire regardless of liability. | ||
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ArbAttack
Canada198 Posts
1. The firefighters were inhumane! They should have saved the house regardless; in simpler terms, I hope they do so in your region, everyone thanks the heroism of the firefighters but stops paying fire insuarance, and your fire department goes broke. No more fire protection for you! Congratulations! 2. But fire insurance shouldn't be optional! The man should have been taxed or the burden of of fire coverage should have been shared by everyone in the state/country! Well, if this is your logic then you have no fucking idea how politics work I'm afraid. Those very people who are now pissed off at the city and the fire department are the SAME people who most certainly elected the policy makers who PROMISED to make fire insurance optional in the first place. And if you think anyone in their right mind in the city are willing to vote for a politician who advocates a $50/person increase in taxes so that someone living 500km away from you on some redneck hick farm could have fire coverage, then you're really fucking nutters. 3. For those of you cant read, here are the facts in BOLD LETTERS: - The firefighters did not stand there and WATCH the house burn down for TWO hours. They were not present at the scene until the end. - The pets died because the owner DIDN'T LET THEM OUT. The fire took TWO hours to spread to the house, he had TWO hours to let the pets out. Speculations are he was betting on the death of his pets garnering him sympathy / compensation. THE FIREFIGHTERS WERE NOT AT FAULT. The home owner gambled his chances, and got exactly what he deserved. | ||
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kojinshugi
Estonia2559 Posts
What else is new. | ||
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