The Ethics of Fire

Let’s try this one as a hypothetical. Suppose for a moment that you and your neighbors decide to hire someone to patrol your neighborhood and put out anything that catches on fire. You live far out in the country, and if something starts burning there is no larger authority in reach that will come to help you, so it makes sense to set up your own fire patrol. Now let’s suppose that the people on the other side of the highway find out about your fire patrol and ask if you will have your patrol service look out for their properties, too. You offer to include them on the patrol route if they pick up the same share of the expenses as everyone else, but they refuse; since you’re already paying for the patrol, they figure you can just lend them a hand whenever they need one. After all, who could watch their neighbor’s house burn and not try to help? And besides, what are the odds they’ll ever have a house fire, anyway?

How would you react to that situation? Would it make you angry? Would you tell these neighbors to get their own fire patrol and refuse to let yours help them for free? Would your answer be different if your own fire patrol could not cover your property effectively if they were across the highway part of the time – and they certainly couldn’t come and put out your fires if they were busy helping someone across the road who was freeloading on your service? What if an actual fire broke out just outside your patrol radius; would you forbid your fire patrol from helping and just watch those other people’s house burn down?

Well, before you answer those questions, you might want to consider the events that happened this week in Obion County, Tennessee. According to the story on MSNBC, the City of South Fulton has a fire department that is only responsible for the area within the city limits; residents living in the rest of the county can opt into the fire coverage by paying $75 a year, or can elect to take their chances. Apparently, a lot of people living in rural Obion County have gone with the second option, figuring that they aren’t likely to ever have a house fire, and if they do the South Fulton Fire Department will come to help them anyway. This turns out to an invalid assumption, however; last week a family that had refused to subscribe to fire protection had their house burn down while the fire department stood by to make sure that none of the homes that were covered caught fire – but took no other action…

Now, one could argue that the right not to lose everything you own in a fire is a basic human right, and the South Fulton government should be ashamed of itself – and a lot of the online comments are doing just that. But the mayor is correct when he points out that the city and its fire department have limited resources, and responding to every fire call isn’t possible. He’s also correct that everyone in the county should know about this policy by now – and, in fact, the victims of this fire confirmed that they did know what would happen in the event of a fire, but had chosen to do nothing about it. A fact which becomes even more incredible when you realize that this is the SECOND fire to have this outcome in the last two years – and that the fire fee policy has been on the books for over twenty years now…

I’m not saying that people should be denied a basic human service like fire protection because they can’t afford to pay for it, but this case is about people who could afford the service and wouldn’t pay for it. So I have to ask: do we have a responsibility to protect people who won’t (not can’t; won’t) accept any responsibility for a share of the cost of doing so? Or should we just accept that people have free will and the right to do whatever they want, no matter how stupid it is? No one wants to have government control over all aspects of their lives, or to have an all-powerful authority telling us what to do, but where do we draw the line? Do we, in fact, have an ethical responsibility to save people from the consequences of their own stupidity?

It’s worth thinking about…