Pengwuino said:
What if they were to put out the fire. What does that tell everyone else? Forget paying your bill, just wait until something happens and we'll still do the job and then maybe (but probably not) you'll pay us later.
If nothing else, I would figure having a fire on your block (never mind, at your own house) would motivate you to pay the fee in a much more timely fashion forever afterward. If it were me, and they actually HAD attempted to save my cat, I think I would probably become this otherwise stupid law's greatest advocate.
If someone didn't have insurance and their house was broken into, is it an issue of human decency if no insurance company will go and pay for their neglectfulness?
I would agree that loss of property is not so important as the loss of life. This however was a matter of
immediate potential loss of life (not even something like cancer).
Office_Shredder said:
This guy doesn't live inside the city limits. They have no jurisdiction over him.
Even still, the fire department in fact arrived at the scene, to make sure that the neighbor's house didn't catch fire. The irony of it is that they somehow wouldn't want to be accused to being negligent
that way.
Mech_Engineer said:
You're assuming of course that the pets would have been saved if the fire department responded... there's no way to know this. By the time they responded the pets might have already died of smoke inhalation.
That's true. But the real issue isn't so much that they didn't arrive in time--it's that they didn't attempt to extinguish the blaze upon arrival. They apparently sprayed the perimeter with water to keep it from spreading to the neighbors yard who had paid the fee.
The fact is the guy should have paid his fee if he wanted fire coverage, not paying the fee was a terrible oversight on his part, and not the fault of the fire department.
It is also true that the owner of the house should have paid the fee beforehand. And for that matter, I'm sure that the department (legally speaking) cannot be held liable, as a result (even if they are morons).
However, the home owner's personal negligence ought not preclude anyone else from their own personal responsibilities. That means the department as well. There's an ethical responsibility--aside from the reason, that it would be tough to call yourself firemen if you don't actually attempt to put out fires (unless this is really a parallel dimension, not unlike Fahrenheit 451).
In some ways he's lucky they didn't respond and slap him with a $50,000 bill, three new pets are a lot cheaper than that.
If they wanted to charge the home owner any amount at the scene, I'll bet he probably would have paid it; or signed a contract to that effect. And then they could have sent it to collections, and destroyed his credit if they really wanted to. Somehow, that would have seemed less crappy on their part.
As it is he was under insured too, we obviously can't expect an insurance company to retroactively bill him premiums and pay for replacing his house.
Part of living in a free country is taking responsibility for your property and it's protection.
The thing with house fires though, is that they have a way of spreading (it isn't as localized as say for example a typical automobile collision). So even if they (the town or the department) felt justified--and were legally protected to do so--in spiting this guy, that could have also potentially put innocent bystanders at risk--which is certainly criminally negligent on their part, aside from being really stupid.
It's tragic he lost everything, but it's no one's fault but his own.
I've got a better idea- let's make it a law that if you don't pay for a service, you should have no expectation of being able to use it (wait, that already exists).
At any rate, I'm fairly certainly there would have been a different outcome, had three people, rather than 3 or more pets, been trapped in the home, when he first called 911.
The dumbest person working the switchboard in the world, wouldn't want to be implicated in that sort of debacle. I'm sure they would have done "the right" thing under those circumstances at least. I certainly hope they would have.
Maybe not, if they were looking at it from a purely legal perspective--no shoes, no shirt, no service; no tickee, no shirtee.
Which means really, they could have just as well acted in similar manner here; but chose not to. Maybe they just don't value animals.
Makes me wonder what the ASPCA has to say about it.
