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.
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.
This is stupid. This is dangerously stupid.
Fortunately we don't live in the dangerously stupid country of the United States. If this was anywhere in the Commonwealth in any Commonwealth country, there is duty of care with regards reasonableness as spelled out in Blyth v Birmingham Waterworks Company (1856).
It is reasonable to expect that the fire brigade will make an effort to put out a fire. Under Common Law, a reasonable person failing to act falls under the grounds of negligence.
Negligence as stated by judge Baron Edward Hall Alderson is "the omission to do something which a reasonable man, guided upon those considerations which ordinarily regulate the conduct of human affairs, would do, or doing something which a prudent and reasonable man would not do. The defendants might have been liable for negligence, if, unintentionally, they omitted to do that which a reasonable person would have done, or did that which a person taking reasonable precautions would not have done."
Equity in English Law and as a result the law in Australia, is distinct from Common Law and Case Law in that the law of equity provides in theory what is just, ethical and... equitable. It might be perfectly legal that if someone hasn't paid the fee for fire insurance but to simply let their house burn to the ground when something could have been done, is disgusting. The mere fact that you can opt out is quite frankly pathetic.
Why stop at fire fighting? If a person didn't pay for the ambulance service should they simply be allowed to die on the side of the road? Is that reasonable, ethical or equitable?
Morally, I question the type of society American is becoming where money is placed in front of life and assistance. By inference, if Australia follows behind America by about 10 years, is this where we're going to end up?
In the fiercely capitalist days of Victorian England, this very issue about fire service came to a blazing conclusion. Following the Great Fire of London in 1666, various fire insurance companies started to spring up, operating their own fire brigades. Affixed to many buildings throughout England (and in North America), small plaques began to appear which denoted not only that the building had fire insurance, but which company they were insured with.
The problem was that fire is not discriminating, and a fire which started in one building could spread to another. If the building next door was with a different insurance company or even had no insurance at all, then it was common practice for fire brigades to let buildings burn to the ground, just like as Mr Cranick found out.
The Metropolitan Fire Brigade Act was passed in 1865 and the responsibility of firefighting away from the insurance companies precisely because they refused to put out fires they didn't have a direct interest in.
Their negligence firstly caused more than 35 buildings to burn down on the north bank of the Thames in 1834 including the Palace of Westminster (aka the Houses of Parliament) and when the Tooley Street fire happened on the south bank in 1861, it lasted 14 days.
http://www.london-fire.gov.uk/TheTooleyStreetFire.asp
Actual history proves that letting the private sector manage the fire departments is not only foolhardly but if things go wrong, it causes a hideous market failure.
All I can say is that personal liberty matters precisely jack squat if you're dead.
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