Let It Burn?

UffDa

UffDa

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Sep 11, 1999
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Paulden AZ is about 12 miles north of me on Hwy 89. A few days ago another house was allowed to burn down. Paulden is outside the boundaries of our fire district and
our fire dept. will not respond unless the individual homeowners contract with it. (I pay about $425 a year included in my property taxes) There are a number of legal and other
reasons why our fire dept. will not respond.

Paulden used to have a volunteer fire dept., but couldn't or wouldn't support it. Every time this happens there is a lot of fuss and fury, but when it dies down, everyone forgets and goes about their business as usual.:rolleyes:

I am curious about other parts of the country and how fire protection is handled in rural areas.







http://www.prescottaz.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=102897
 
We have a mainly volunteer department (2 paid to be on duty 24/7) paid for by property tax. The tax raises apx 1,002,888/year or apx $100 per resident of the Township )\(36 sqr. mi.)
 
If there isn't a sufficient water supply in a rural area, a lot of the times it doesn't matter
how many fire trucks show up. Depending on how well involved the structure is when the
fire is discovered and reported and how long the fire dept's response time is. Ive sat in fire rigs
and watched many structures burn to the ground and that was inside a major metropolitan cities limits.
 
In this state, all fire departments are property tax supported, with the exception of Boeing, some indian tribes, and the federal installations.

I live in a semi rural area, and I'm retired from a department that was part paid career, and part volunteer. Since all residents of the fire district pay property tax, you are covered. We do have a seperate county wide EMS levy that each district/city divides up according to number of residents. Each district or city has its own individual tax rate, so fire department funding depends on that rate per $1,000 of assessed value. All of the rural districts in this county have at least one full time paid person. Some districts have full crews augmented by volunteers. My old department has one full paid crew on 24/7, full time Chief, Deputy Chief, Battalion Chief, and a couple support staff. The rest of the personnel are part time paid volunteers.
 
Keep in mind that your homeowner's insurance rate depends greatly on your fire service. If you have no fire protection, your many not even be insurable. Without insurance, you can't get a mortgage. And that will make selling your house hard, certainly lowers your property value. So, maybe you do pay $500/year in tax, but if that lowers your insurance rate, then it's not so bad. And if it raises your property value, then it may suddenly be worth more than it costs.
 
grybsh7 said:
If there isn't a sufficient water supply in a rural area, a lot of the times it doesn't matter
how many fire trucks show up. Depending on how well involved the structure is when the
fire is discovered and reported and how long the fire dept's response time is. Ive sat in fire rigs
and watched many structures burn to the ground and that was inside a major metropolitan cities limits.
Click to expand...


That's a good point. I don't recall seeing that discussed.
 
Where I live it's a volunteer fire dept.They only have the water that's in the pumper truck and response time is normally to late.Insurance for replacement cost is a must have.
 
When I served on the vollunteer fire department we responded to fires and did what we could. If we arrived early enough we would focus our efforts on saving the structure, but often we would arrive only to find the entire structure involved. After determining that there was nobody inside we would let the building burn and turn our efforts to prevent the fire from spreading into the bush or other buildings.

One area of contention was protection boundaries. We used to respond to fires outside of our area, but regulations came out that prevented us from doing that and if we did we were not insured. In short there were buildings and homes adjacent to the bourndary limit of our firehall that were let to burn to the ground with no help. Some changes have been made that allow the firemen to cross the line if it is not too far from boundary but for others they are still out of luck. As a vollunteer fire department we are limited by our resources and team members.
 
I'm a volunteer fire fighter now.

My county has 9 volunteer fire departments right now. I am a firefighter for the largest department, and it's also the county seats fire department. We have trucks that are owned by both the city and the county. (Our ladder truck isn't suppose to leave the city without approval from the mayor because the thing was about a million dollars.) The entire city has hydrants, but we also have a tanker, and another pumper/tanker for calls outside city limits. We have two stations for our department.
We have...

Two dedicated engines.
One pumper/tanker.
One 105' ladder truck.
One heavy rescue/engine.
Two light rescue/air trucks.
Five brush trucks.
Two squads (just pickup trucks basically. For medicals/people hauling)
One tanker
One boat!


No department in the county requires people to pay in order for us to fight a house fire or any other sort of fire/incident. The three nearest departments respond to something like a structure fire. My department is in the middle of the county, and because of that we respond to basically every structure fire.

My department averages around 3000 calls a year.
 
I think here it's done through a contract between the county and the city. And there are rural volunteer fire departments scattered around too.

We live in town, and the distance from our front door to the nearest fire hydrant was a factor for computing insurance costs.
 
dunno, i call 911, im sure i pay enough in taxes living here in Southern California, that, and i rent.
 
Keep in mind, also, that fire departments have insurance too. And that insurance only covers the within defined boundaries. Going outside of their boundaries may leave them uninsured.
 
North Jersey is suburbs right up against one another, sometimes intertwined, hard to tell which street is in which town.

Local fire departments have mutual aid agreements because it is often easier for a neighboring department to get to an area than a town's own department.

We have two fire companies, both volunteer. Frankly, there is so much money in this part of the state, I'm not surprised when I see new equipment here or in neighboring towns. I would prefer paid departments, though.
 
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