Although I can understand the financial arguments for what that fire company did, what happened seems terribly wrong to me. I can't really think of a more corrosive situation for a volunteer fire company than what happened, for all parties involved.

As a volunteer--or even paid--fire fighter, it must be incredibly demoralizing to be right there, with the residents pleading them to do something, checkbook in hand, but ordered not to do anything simply because "they didn't pay up". Is this what they volunteered for? Could you look your neighbor in the eye after you let their house burn down when you could've stopped it?

Similarly, I'm sure that this incident has struck a bad chord in members of the community, too, and could hurt fund raising or recruitment in the future, even if they understand the financial argument. What if the circumstances of the residents were different? What if it was an elderly couple struggling under a mountain of medical bills, and that's why they didn't pay? Based on the little I know of the situation, I think the way it happened was a lose-lose outcome.

I agree with haertig--a volunteer, public safety organization should treat everyone the same, but bill them later in situations like this. Make it painful enough and a pain in the butt enough that people realize it's smarter to pay the fee rather than gamble on not needing their help and skipping the fee. A small number will never pay, out of principle or spite or whatever, but as a community, we can rise above those few, can't we?

Well, but if it's a lot more than a few holdouts...well, there are other forces out there, too, slowly destroying family and community life, and that's sad. The last few years, in particular, have highlighted many of those forces and pressures that have been eating away at us--individually and collectively--for a long time now. And that's a much bigger problem than just a $75 fire protection fee.