On Thu, 15 Apr 2010 00:07:37 -0400, the infamous "J. Clarke" scrawled the following:
...or what burned to the ground waiting for said dept. 2 competing agencies had a dispute on a fire in Merlin last year and the result was that two truck companies sat and watched a house burn to the ground while the first responder's water truck lumbered there. The second responder (the company who serves me) responded with a real water truck and was prevented from stopping the blaze by the new guys on the block. It was truly criminal.
That said, there are three types of protection:
The govt's tax-base-supplied fire dept, the fire protection we pay to the fire dept ($277/year for me), and the fire insurance.