Firefighters Refuse to Help Non-Member

This is a news report from over that place where they keep telling us how much better and how more civilized then us they are and how they are the ones to give culture to the world and all that. Well, guess they ain't as big and good as they thinks they is, LOL.


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Mo. Firefighters Refuse to Help Non-Member

MONETT, Mo. (AP) - Rural firefighters stood by and watched a fire destroy a garage and a vehicle because the property owner had not paid membership dues. Bibaldo Rueda - who was injured battling the flames Monday - offered to pay the dues as the fire blazed away, but the Monett Rural Fire Department does not have a policy for on-the-spot billing, Sheriff's Detective Robert Evenson said.

Fire Chief Ronnie Myers defended the no-pay, no-aid policy, saying the membership-based organization could not survive if people thought the department would respond for free. The department said it will fight a fire without question if a life is believed to be in danger.

Rueda used a garden hose and buckets to fight the flames while firefighters stood by on the road, watching in case the blaze spread to neighboring properties owned by members. The fire eventually burned itself out.

Rueda said no one told him about the dues policy when he moved in 1 1/2 years ago.
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At least in the UK the Fire Service, even the rural ones, will put out a fire regardless, because that is their job, even the volunteer brigade and the same with volunteer fire fighters, say, in Germany, where many rural communities rely on their volunteers fire fighters, the Freiwillige Feuerwehr.
In this country many, many years ago things like that did happen when the fire brigades were part of the insurance companies and would only attend to fires at their members' properties. One of the reasons houses used to have the insurance companies plaques in various forms attached to the front of their houses. And there are the Americans trying to tell us that they are so much better. Good God! That system is from just after the Middle Ages and surely not fit for 2006.