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With California experiencing two years of unprecedented wildfires that have left more than 20,000 homes destroyed and scores dead, the private firefighting business is booming. These brigades work independently from county firefighters; their job is to protect specific homes under contract with insurance companies.
Their work can vary from pushing back flames as they approach properties to reaching the site before the blaze arrives and spraying homes with fire retardant.
But the private forces have generated complaints from some fire departments, who say they don't always coordinate with local crews and amount to one more worry as they try to evacuate residents and battle the blaze.
"From the standpoint of first responders, they are not viewed as assets to be deployed. They're viewed as a responsibility," said Carroll Wills, communications director for California Professional Firefighters, a labor union representing rank-and-file firefighters in the state.
What began more than a decade ago as a white-glove service for homeowners in well-to-do neighborhoods has expanded in recent years as the wildfire danger has increased, said Michael Barry, a spokesman for the Insurance Information Institute, a not-for-profit organization that educates the public about the insurance industry.
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-private-firefighters-20181127-story.html
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday November 30 2018, @05:52PM
Generally I agree with you, but I do see one error in your above statements:
If the public fire department had the budget to have these private corporations working for them, they probably would be already. The problem is that there are people trying to throw more money at the problem of the fires, money that the public government either doesn't have or isn't willing to allocate that way. Granted, you could say that they should just donate to the fire department directly, but particularly since the money is coming from insurance companies, they're probably not very interested in donating to people who they don't necessarily represent. And I don't really see why there can't be a middle ground between "they must be hired and paid by the state" vs "they are not a legitimate organization and should not be allowed to operate."
In general, I don't really accept that the government ought to be trying to protect me from myself. If that's true, then civil rights are a rather meaningless concept. Mandatory evacuations which criminalize attempts to act as a "good Samaritan" are categorically immoral IMO. Of course, that would also mean that they have no obligation to help you -- which is actually true already, so that's not a technical or a legal problem; if the public firefighters are changing tactics just to defend these dopes then they're doing it purely for the PR value. And I don't think that's necessarily something we should be building laws and public policy around.
And if we do decide to fully commit to the idea of government agents trying to protect people from their own stupidity, then why not have a certification program so that you can go try to defend your or your clients' property as long as you demonstrate that you're capable of working well with others? You've got a lot of manpower and a lot of equipment that's trying to help with your mission -- or at least some part of it, which could still free up resources to be used elsewhere -- and you're just going to tell them all to GTFO? How does that make any sense?