Firemen Allow Home to Burn Down for Missing $75 Fee

I'm was at a loss of words when I initially heard about this.

Gene Cranick of Obion County, TN, called his local 911 after a burning of their trash (I'll leave my normal Global Warming/Environmental Disaster arguments to the side for this) went out of control and started to burn down his home. He was told he had forgotten to pay a $75 fee to the county for firefighting services. Only when the fire start spreading to his neighbor's property did the fire department arrive, and only then to basically spray on the property line fence since his neighbor, not Cranick, had paid the fee. In the video below, you'll note that both men (Cranick and Neighbor) both offered to pay on the spot and to pay whatever amount, to save Cranick's home. As well as note, towards the end of the segment, that Cranick has fire insurance. He forgot the $75, and now he is out of a home.

The fire fighters just stood and watched while a man's whole life went up in flames. This makes no sense from any angle. Especially if the fire department needed these funds so badly that they could refuse to do a service despite the ability of the person to pay.

To create an analogy (but steering clear of a logical fallacy): Lets say you had an Emergency Room tax in the same county. You go into an ER with a shotgun wound only to find out you forgot to pay this 'tax'. You offer to pay this tax on the spot. You also have medical insurance so it's not like you're completely out of the loop for having care done. You are still refused service and die in the waiting room due to your injuries, all because you missed paying a 'tax', not your insurance.

A man next to you when you got hit was hit by buckshot himself, but paid his 'tax'. That man lives to see another day because he received life saving medical attention. It doesn't seem to matter if he had medical insurance or not, he still gets help in the ER because he, unlike you, paid this 'tax'.

But there are in fact LAWS forbidding ERs from doing this for the simple reason: They as a profession healers. They are protectors. So too can I call firemen protectors. However I liken the Obion County Fire Dept. somewhere between a protection racket and these firemen.

So in the end Gene Cranick sits in a trailer on his now burned property, while his neighbor (whom, per Gene, ALSO offered to pay the firemen) still has his home. If this 'tax' (I've been putting it in quotes since it is not and insurance policy that is paying out for damages, it's to pay for a public service therefor it is a 'tax') was so god damn important to the county why were they not hounding this guy if he forgot to pay? I know if I forget to pay my local, state, or federal taxes I'm in deep shit.

Something else that that I see cropping up in this was to call this a Libertarian type public service. As I was scanning the web while writing this article I came upon another article that addresses this though by Tom Knighton. In short, no this is not a Libertarian Free-Market plan. In fact, Obion County basically has a monopoly on fire protection. Cranick had a pay-or-nothing scenario when it came to his fire protection. And he did not choose to not pay, it simply slipped out of his mind.

How the hell this was policy for 20 years (it was enacted in 1990) and not have caused lives/property damage until now is beyond me. In fact I may go digging myself to find out how often this policy has been enforced, and how those that do enforce it feel. Both what they feel that they can/have to enforce it, and how they feel about Cranick's current situation. Heh, if I do, I'll keep you posted.