Here’s an interesting story:
In Idaho, when the Castle Rock wildfire started with a lightning
strike, broke out and started to rapidly spread, hundreds of high-end
homes were immediately evacuated. At that point a national insurance
company which caters to America’s wealthy decided that it needed to act
quickly. The insurance company sent a private crew of firefighters to
Wood River Valley, near Castle Rock, to protect 22 homes that it has
insured for millions of dollars.…The insurance company
provided a fire truck and two man team to douse the insured homes with
Phos-Chek, the same fire retardant dropped from U.S. Forest Service
aircraft.
Insurance services like this have a long history not just in fire fighting but also in crime-fighting. In 18th and 19th century Britain long before the advent of government police, members of the public organized themselves into prosecution associations – essentially insurance clubs that would pay for the investigation, detection and prosecution of crime. You can still see a faint imprint of this lost system today when insurance companies hire detectives to investigate large property crimes. See The Voluntary City for more.
Note the tone of the full story. Apparently the reporter for this trial lawyer’s website feels there is something immoral or sleazy about AIG offering a premium loss prevention service.
There is something immoral: If Regular Joe tries to go the the area and salvage a few valuable possessions from his trailer home, he’ll be told to “stay back, the area is closed.”
If private FFs get in trouble, Municipal FFs have to go save them. Indirectly, lives of Municipal FFs are being risked by letting people through, but only if they’re there to save rich people’s property. (keyword: ‘property’, not ‘lives’).
Once upon a time virtually all firefighters were paid for by insurance companies.
Yet, it has been completely replaced by public firefighters.
But I never see any informed discussion of how and why this happened.
I’ve seen some stories, but never any good studies.
Does anyone know of any good studies of the subject.
Private “fire fighting” companies also had a nasty habit of _starting_ fires, too, as as to make sure they had enough business. Moral hazard can run in more than one direction, after all.
The Romans take on private firefighting:
“Most notorious was his acquisition of burning houses: when Crassus received word that a house was on fire, he would arrive and purchase the (apparently lost) property along with surrounding buildings for a modest sum, and then employ his army of 500 clients to put the fire out before much damage had been done. Crassus’s clients employed the Roman method of firefighting — destroying the burning building to curtail the spread of the flames.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Licinius_Crassus
Competition leading to violence between fire fighting companies has a little bit of truth to it but is mostly a myth promoted by rent-seeking municipal firms eager to discredit volunteer fire fighters. For a more complete view of what was going on see:
Government Prohibitions on Volunteer Fire Fighting in Nineteenth-Century America: A Property Rights Perspective
Fred S. McChesney
The Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. 15, No. 1. (Jan., 1986), pp. 69-92.
URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0047-2530%28198601%2915%3A1%3C69%3AGPOVFF%3E2.0.CO%3B2-1
The original article reads:
“Although it was not a private fire, the team sent in by AIG were allowed access to areas that were closed off to the general public in order to protect the specific homes insured by AIG Private Client Group that were entitled to the loss prevention services.”
It seems these private fire companies were provided privileged access.
Barnaby Jones and Banacek worked for insurers.
Nothing wrong here!!!
The insured paid a ‘premium’ for ‘premium service’.
Guess that you get what you ‘pay for’.
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