I'm sure it had something to do with him being mexican.

Makes you wonder how much things are in Shelbyville.

Makes you wonder how much worse things are in Shelbyville.

You meet a certain kind of libertarian idiot in the Southeast, a toxic intersection of residual secessionist claptrap and undaunted arrogance that is the inheritance of privilege abetted by discrimination and subjugation of the underclass.

I was talking to one of these fools, and as he was spinning the small government ideal for me, I asked him if the idea of a fire department insulted his free market model. He said, yes, but didn't specify what sort of system should be in place. Good to see that they are working this out.

Um, couple things:

1) Missouri isn't the southeast - it borders Nebraska. A case could be made that Mississippi is in the southeast, and it has a name similar to Missouri, so maybe you just got confused.
2) Most small towns and rural areas in the U.S. have volunteer fire departments and volunteer ambulance squads whose equipment costs are partly subsidized by the municipality or county, partly supported by donations or membership fees.
3) Fire engines cost upward of $500,000 a pop. Rural fire departments also require tank trucks in the event there is no body of water from which to draw.
4) Just to be clear, volunteer fire department firefighters are, in fact, volunteers. Which is to say they are unpaid.
5) Many counties in the U.S. are extremely sparsely populated, and so the local government has neither the money nor the need for much in the way of emergency services.

So everyone seems to be focused on what this volunteer fire brigade did not do on one day during the whole of its existence. They did not put out a fire that was not their responsiblity to put out. They did, however, prevent the fire from spreading, which is what they're supposed to do, I assume as part of their charter.

Meanwhile, the volunteer firefighters and EMTs all have to get out of bed a few times a week at 3am because somebody wrecked a car, or somebody's trash fire got out of hand, or somebody threw a lit cigarette off the side of the road. Rural volunteers break their asses to make their communities places worth living, which is why when there's a heatwave in the rural midwest or rural south or rural New England, New York or New Jersey, tens of thousands of elderly people don't die. And for that they can look forward to snide condescension from a bunch of New Yorkers.

I'm really not clear how any of you snide fuckers think this is supposed to work. Do you think magic money from Washington is going to buy a fleet of $500,000 fire engines for counties with a few thousand people? For the record, Barry County, Missouri, in which Monett is situated, is 800 square miles (about the same size as Luxembourg) but contains just 34,000 people, most of whom live in the towns, not out in the county like Mr. Rueda.

There are pluses and minuses to a rural lifestyle. Low taxes counts as a plus. Poor access to emergency services is a minus.

Sterling, the job of firefighters is to put out fires. Their status as paid or as volunteers is irrelevant. Volunteer firefighters volunteer to be firefighters for many reasons, I'm sure, but mainly because they understand that in any community fires will happen and will have to be put out. Once they've volunteered to be a firefighter, they have a responsibility to put out fires. Property owners in the community become members of the firefighting entity for the same reason that other members of the community become firefighters: the understand that in any community fires will happen and will have to be put out. If one person doesn't pay membership dues because he doesn't know about the sytem, that doesn't mean he's not part of the community. There's still a fire in the community, and it still needs to be put out, and that's still the job of the community in general and specifically of the community's firefighters. I find it incredibly hard to understand the mindset of a firefighter who, faced with a fire, will just watch it burn, and, when asked why, respond with recourse to highly abstract notions such as moral hazard. Even if you're not a firefighter, it takes a particular kind of heartlessness to refuse help in such a dire situation when you're uniquely situated to offer exactly the help which is needed. I am quite sure that there is no rulebook saying that these firefighters must never help a non-member. But in any case I am shocked at the very idea that access to firefighters is anywhere in this country contingent on knowing about the existence of a certain membership organisation.

But in any case I am shocked at the very idea that access to firefighters is anywhere in this country contingent on knowing about the existence of a certain membership organisation.

Oh, please. That reads like Claude Rains in Casablanca. You're telling me that you believe the guy managed to get a mortgage and whatever insurance the lender required, but he didn't figure out that being out in the county he had to join a fire department coverage group? I don't buy it. It's not plausible. He decided not to get coverage, and he's saying otherwise now either because he wants to protect his ability to file suit, or because he falsely told his insurance company that he had arranged the fire coverage.

You do understand Rueda isn't living in a municipality, right? He doesn't live in a town. There is no town government or chamber of commerce or other entity to support a fire department. There is a county government that (I'm guessing) maintains the roads, runs the schools, courts and a sheriff's department, and already collects more taxes than the residents care for, which is why they voted against a fire department.

Now I could go into a long dissertation on the virtues of the township system versus those of the county administrative model, really I could, but it's not necessary. You are claiming a right that doesn't exist. Where does it end? Does he have a right to a sewer connection? A municipal water system? Home nursing care?

When you live outside a town, you necessarily have additional responsibilities.

Look, Felix - I've still got cousins who live in the middle of NOWHERE in rural Georgia. If you want, you and the wife can come along sometime and we'll visit with them. We'll take amusing photos of you standing next to the ruins of the abandoned Scotland, Georgia post office.

I usually only get down there for funerals, but why not? I'll show you all sorts of things, not least the difference between living in town and living in the county. I think the Willcox Family Reunion is held the first weekend of June every year at Little Ocmulgee State Park - we can go then. Sound good?

Whatever Sterling. I was living in one of those rural parts of GA when I had the conversation I was referring to. So try your redneck props all you want -- what is it? Mob Jersey connections or Valdosta? What, you spent ten minutes in south GA, so it make you an expert? Sure.

I think the salient point is that the 'volunteers' showed up at the site of the fire and stood there while a man was injured trying to protect property.

Given that the property at issue were several trailers, I doubt that he had Berkshire Hathaway on the case for his 'mortgages'.

But since we're all about family connections, my rural relatives who are dispatchers for a volunteer force would never elect someone as not worthy of community protection.

Ooh, ten miles outside of Vidalia, and twenty off of 16? You practically have relatives living on Rape Creek.

Dude, you keep it soooo real.

However feeble my redneck cred, yo, it nonetheless far exceeds Felix's. Most NJ municipalities have volunteer fire departments. Those don't have the option of not responding to the fire, because all New Jersey land is incorporated under a municipal gov't (township, boro, city, etc.) or state-owned. My father was a volunteer EMT for about five or six years, so I'm somewhat familiar with how the volunteer system works, through his descriptions.

Isabel Paterson - libertarian champion - gave birth to a pithy little one-liner about the practice of towns having amateur firefighters: "The volunteer fire department is usually about as bad as the fire." It's a shame Felix didn't know about it, or he might have managed to write something humorous deliberately, instead of by mere happenstance.

And yeah, Mr. Rueda got some minor first and second degree burns on his hands and arms. I was similarly injured in 1986 while cleaning a Frialator, during my stint as a fry cook at a Garden State Parkway rest top for the Marriott Corporation's celebrated Roy Rogers unit. (There's nothing like frying your own skin while dressed like a "cowpoke" to teach you what real pain feels like.) So I've been there. He'll get over it.

Unless he bought the land in the clear, Rueda has a mortgage. And if he has a mortgage he has insurance. And if he could figure out how to get insurance then he's not a moron. And if he's not a moron then he knew about the damned arrangement with the fire companies.

You are claiming a right that doesn't exist.

What right do you think I am claiming? And where do you think that I think that said right is enshrined? I never said that all American residents have some kind of constitutional right to fire protection. My point was a bit more, well, human: that if a certain property is in an area covered by a certain fire department, then that fire department has a moral, if not legal, responsibility to put out a fire on that property.

As to whether or not Rueda is a moron, who knows. There are lots of things that smart people don't know, just because they've never been told. You have no idea whether or not he has a mortgage. This is a small plot of land we're talking about, in the middle of nowhere. It's entirely plausible that he came into some money and bought it outright: I doubt it was particularly expensive. In any case, morons have just as much right to fire protection as anybody else.

In any case, there is no doubt that the firefighters, on an individual level, behaved in a less-than-heroic fashion. I'm sure they're good Christians; I wonder what their pastor would think of their actions.

Those fucks in that fire department stood there while his house bunred and "made sure it didn't spread." As Felix pointed out, people with even a little heart who are not firefighters and happened to be driving by most likely would stop and help the guy out. How about this, they put out the fire, then legally demand that the guy sign up for coverage? Sounds reasonable.

Almost always, trailers are parked on leased land. Trailers themselves can be bought for as low as $2k. It's likely that no mortgage or insurance is involved in this case. Even if he did have a mortgage, there is no requirement to have insurance for the CONTENTS of the home, just the structure and land.

And what happened to helping thy neighbor? Isn't that the point of living in small towns/rural communities vs. cities. Ain't all the folk posed to know your name, trust you won't enter their unlocked doors and be bringing you pie and shit? Not watching your home burn down whilst you acquire 2nd/3rd degree fucking burns?

Yeah, that's taking the libertarian crap just a little too far.
Again, I'm sure that guys name had been Michael Needham instead of Bibaldo Rueda they would have put the fire out.