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TechnoratiPrivatizing Fire Protection is Going to Burn
MONTEREY, Calif. - While New Englanders ponder just how soggy a summer this might be, Californians are bracing for another dangerously dry season, with high temperatures and increased risk of fire. Nationwide, there have already been over 41,000 wildfires this year - 10,000 more than the 10-year average.
And as fire danger climbs here in the West, fire protection is gradually being added to the list of essential services for which the rich are better off than their less fortunate neighbors. It’s a list that already includes better healthcare for those with costly medical insurance; better education for those who can afford expensive private schools; greater personal safety for wealthy residents able to fund private security patrols.
Privatization of fire protection, especially in the Western United States, has emerged in several forms. In some instances, private contractors are hired by state and local government to deal with extreme fire emergencies. The National Wildfire Suppression Association, formed in 1991, represents over 150 private firms that employ firefighters and equipment to assist locally on an “as needed’’ basis.
Quite a different form of private fire protection is being funded by large insurance companies. Last year,
Yet another, more socially vexing concept is the one designed by companies such as Golden Valley Fire Suppression, based in Carmel Valley, Calif. Next month the firm will begin selling private fire services directly to property owners in areas already served by municipal fire departments. For a fee of $30,000, the company will supply fire protection for as long as the customer owns the home. It plans to station its own fire trucks in carefully chosen “clusters’’ near paying customers in order to guarantee a response time of under five minutes. Golden Valley intends to launch similar operations in Las Vegas and Tucson.
It’s hard to fault wealthy homeowners for seeking additional protection for valuable property, especially after several years of devastating wildfires in California. A turning point for many came in October 2007 when fire destroyed over 375 homes near San Diego in an area where local fire protection was inadequate.
On the other hand, an increasing role for private firms in basic safety services such as fire and police protection prompts concern over training procedures, reliability, and accountability. Moreover, privatization can lead to a spiral in which reduced public services cause increased private involvement, which, in turn, leads to even more cuts in public funding.
What happens to those residents in areas served by Golden Valley who decline to purchase the high-priced private fire protection? As private service expands, publicly funded fire service is likely to become even less reliable. Municipalities are less likely to fund additional fire protection in areas where it is largely handled by the private sector.
The very term “private sector’’ is central to the overarching debate among conservatives and liberals about the responsibility of government to fully fund basic services. Why not allow the private sector to take over as much as possible? The IRS is turning to private companies to collect taxes for a fee. The military uses private police to provide security in Iraq. Many states, including California, are housing inmates in prisons run by private businesses. With each such arrangement, the potential for abuse becomes painfully clear.
Of course, the public sector isn’t without its own history of costly abuses. But the remedy cannot be abandoning vital public services, or placing them in the hands of less-than-fully-accountable firms, in ways that favor the affluent.
In California, with its horrendous $24 billion budget deficit, virtually every area of tax-supported operations faces cutbacks. How severely basic services like fire protection are curtailed, or restructured, is a burning question.
16 Comments so far
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fire fighting is one job that should be a government job, paid for at all levels
the idea of for profit fire fighting is scary, can you think why?
fire at the mansion door? piss on it...
1. The reason for the large number of homes burned and the 16 lives lost in the San Diego fires? That very conservative county, year after year, refused to pass bond measures that would have updated equipment and paid for additional firefighting personnel. While Los Angeles County has a veritable Air Force of water and retardant dropping helicopters, San Diego County had 0. When the fires where raging, the governor made emergency plans with the Navy and Marines to use their 'copters. So, the fire protection the residents refused to pay for themselves, ended up being paid for by every taxpayer in the country. This is called "socializing costs". Just another case of the wealthy who lecture the rest of us about living by our own hard work, caught sucking away at the public teat.
2. I was looking at the massive mansions that have been built in the canyon and on the hillsides to the east of my home since the last major fire here. These multi-million dollar monstrosities mean that our little community of small, older homes will burn with the next fire. With the fire departments mandated to lower both the costs of fighting fires and the dollar loss of fires, we've seen tactics change from deploying structure protection units - personnel and engines - to the areas most endangered, in the path of the leading edge of the fire, to their being sent to the fewer but more expensive homes on the periphery of the fire. Areas with older, less-expensive homes burn - Cedar Glenn, San Dimas Canyon, Palmer Canyon - while the structure protection crews stand around on the patios of modern fortresses ready in case the fire blows in their direction. The active fighting of fires to protect homes has become a passive wait to save money.
With the privatization of wildland firefighting, those of us with the least will loose everything while others with more than enough will loose nothing. The message is that we, our homes and the tax dollars we contribute don't matter anymore. The raw meanness of our society is beyond sad.
Busque la verdad!
It is EXACTLY this kind of thinking that Naomi Klein explores in her groundbreaking book 'The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism'.
Walk in peace.
If this kind of economic Balkanization is not stopped, pretty soon we will have 300 million individuals and no country.
Nip this in the bud. Charge them (isurance company firefighting team) a $100,000 discharge fee from the utility to access fire hydrants; also charge them a rate of $10.00 and above per thousand gallons consumed. Taxpayers money funds the water systems of this country, why should rich people benefit from all are shared industry.
Whoever put this forward knows full well that the public is generally quite ignorant of the history of private fire departments. As maxpayne questioned prior, ancient Rome had this system until it became apparent that private fire brigades would set fires to get customers. During the Robber Baron era, fire brigades were private as well, and unless your building had a brass plate indicating your dues were up to date, they would let your structure burn. Quite often, not putting a structure fire led to other buildings going up as well (plus the old Roman racket of deliberate fires to drive sales). This is part of what led to the creation of public fire departments. As the behavior of private insurers has shown, public well being should not be a business opportunity, as their profit motive will always outweigh whatever decency calls for.
Sorry, for my prior post. Yours is better.
Hasn't ANYONE learned a lesson from the "privatization" of the prison systems, the health care systems, the water systems, the roads, or anything ELSE that we are now screwing ourselves with?
Here is just ONE example. In CO, where I live, 25 years ago we spent $70 Million a year on the Dept of Corrections. Now, after the privatizing of that system, we spend $770 Million a year on it. Such an incredible savings, isn't it?
And everything else is the same way. Health care costs are through the roof, with a solid 30% off the top for PROFIT. Who cares if we have 20,000 Americans who die every year because they can't get health care at all? It's FAR more important that the profits for the ultra rich be maintained. People's lives be damned.
I will NEVER understand how anyone could possibly buy the premise that by adding a profit cost on top of everything you do, it will get cheaper. The numbers just CAN'T add up, it's physically impossible. And yet it's constantly maintained that by making everything a for profit deal that you will get cheaper services.
$30,000 for fire protection should tell you just what this is REALLY going to cost. And of that $30,000, just how much do you think will REALLY go to fire protection? I am willing to bet that it's less than half. Even at the health care prices, that is $10,000 that is going to some rich MF's pocket, not protection at all. Yeah, once again, a serious savings.
We are strapped BECAUSE of this idiocy called privatization. It's nothing but a fleecing of the public and it's never going to be anything but a fleecing. It's time that they stopped seeing us as nothing but bottomless pockets. The bottom has been reached, and they still think there is a dime top be had? What a scam.
I'm assuming the private fire trucks drive only on private roads the companies themselves have built? If not, then hopefully the residents who don't have such exclusive services will impose a "road usage fee".
LOVE IT!!
And the downward spiral continues.......
Didn't Rome do privatizing fire protection services until they found out the true costs?
Uh, actually that's how it used to be in the United States as well, except Philadelphia, because of Benjamin Franklin's influence. What finally happened is private fire companies were suing each other for the spread of fire from one city property to another. It's called subrogation and folks usually encounter it in car accidents for which they have a collision deductible. Someone at fault hits you for which you have collision coverage, you pay your deductible expecting to get your car fixed right away and the next thing you know, you're waiting for your insurance company to pay as promised because they're going to wait to collect from the other parties insurance first.
If you don't like that wait for your car, can you imagine being homeless because the two or more private fire companies are squabbling about who should have to do the work to suppress the fire, while you watch your home and possessions burn to the ground? That's what used to happen all the time in the US until people realized with social cooperation there was a better way to protect life and property and sustain the community. Those that can't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Now just think of the "mindset" behind this. The same logic is used to call Health care for all via "single payer" as socialized medicine.
The same logic is used to define the ability to buy insurance for ones own health as a choice and as freedom. It is called a choice. One buys it or one does not so stop complaining if you do not.
The same logic is used to claim that those on food stamps or rental assitance or those receiving educations via pell grants are "welfare queens" or living off the hard work of others.
If it had been the case all along that Fire fighting services privatized the very same arguements would be being used by the powers that be as to why it should not be funded by taxes with equal fire protection services for all as is being used today to try and stave off single payer health care coverage.
In such a world you would have poor people losing their homes to fire because they can not afford "Fire Protection services" , you would have peoples paying 1000 a dollars a month to protect their homes and possesions with "Fire Protection services" being declined payment if it found that a pre-existing condition (faulty wiring) led to that fire and you would have the Government claiming..
"We can not have Single payer Fire protection services as it would unfairly compete with the private sector"
Ronny Raygun is chuckling in his grave thinking about his success in selling trickle down economics to all the working class suckers who are now paying the price.
Get rich or get off !