Fire Department Response
Is it normal for the local VFD to send an invoice to a company where they have responded to a fire? Invoice being for materials used (can completely understand) and for equipment such as tanker, chief car, engine, tanker, etc. I've just never seen this done before and wanted to see if this was the regular MO.
Comments (6)
It's not typically how FDs are operated. However, I have seen some small fire departments do this when they respond outside their jurisdictional boundaries.
It is common for fire departments to bill for multiple false alarms.
What do you mean they billed for tanker, chief car, etc.?
Like Michael mentioned, it's definitely not common. I did work for a department where we did "cost recovery" and billed the facility's insurance company if we responded to them for HazMat calls (to help pay for all our disposable equipment). Definitely never seen a volunteer department do it, though.
Even for multiple false alarms, we may fine them after 5+ false alarms or so, but what you mentioned is wild to me. I've been on 2 different volunteer departments in small, rural communities, as well as been on several different paid departments in Louisville, KY (city of 1,000,000 people), and that's definitely not something commonly done.
I know that some bill for ambulance services, but I've never heard of one billing for an actual fire.
I do not know about small "Town" Volunteer Departments. In Wisconsin they sort of use the word "Town" like we used "township" over in Michigan. When I was a facility manager (HE/EHS) my facility was in a moderate sized city in WI. We have a municipal fire department with full-time fireman with them in the two city stations around the clock, 7 a week. They also run the EMS units in the city, with the paramedics also being fireman.
Here they do charge for ambulance runs. They usually do not charge for fire runs. However, I learned from a very unhappy Asst Fire Chief after a false alarm they ran to our facility that they would charge for another false alarm!
We Emergency Disaster Drill with an exercise on "Business Continuation" per Corporate Policy. Our plant was about 600 yards short of the main airport runway. So I wrote up a scenario where a corporate landed short on top of our plant. Our policy required us to have a drill and submit report on how well we maintained the business. We were extremely busy like usual and Operations did not want to involve the hourly work force, which I argued against, but I lost. WE ran the drill and while it was going on an hourly employee asked why all the managers and supervisors were running around! He said, "We just had a plane land on the roof, but it is a drill," and rushed off himself. The hourly employee did not hear the last part and called "911" reporting a plane had landed on the roof! FD rolled every unit they had and called for help from surrounding departments. Before I knew what was going in our parking lot was full of fire trucks!
Needless to say the Asst Fire Chief was NOT happy!