Private Firefighters
Some of California’s ultrarich are benefiting from an additional level of protection. Speficially, some AIG policyholders are paying for pretty extraordinary preventive measures.
The Wildfire Protection Unit has six trucks outfitted to spray Phos-Chek, the fire retardant used by the U.S. Forest Service. Customers can have Phos-Chek sprayed on brush surrounding their homes before each fire season. During a wildfire, the trucks are sent out whenever a fire comes within three miles of a home and spray all combustible areas.
Such protection doesn’t come cheap. It’s available only to customers of AIG Private Client Group, which serves affluent individuals and their families. The average customer spends $19,000 a year on the insurance, which may also cover yachts, art collections and ransom demands, Rivera said.
Fellow TAS contributor Chris Hayes thinks this is a bad thing. It is, in his view, yet another reflection of our New Gilded Age.
It’s a little known fact that back in the 19th century, most fire-fighting was done by private companies. The way it worked is that you would pay a certain company to protect you and in exchange they’d give a medallion that you would put on your building. Of course, this didn’t work out very well. But why not give it another try in the 21st century?
Of course, this is not how AIG’s Wildfire Protection Unit works. Rather, it offers a level of service that would be impracticable for a publicly-funded Fire Department. So the question is, should we legally prevent wealthy individuals from spending large sums to provide an additional level of protection to their properties?
To my mind, the idea that publicly-funded Fire Departments would expend substantially more effort defending a vast, sprawling estate against fire than a small ranch home seems inegalitarian. The expectation that public resources ought to be deployed in an equitable manner strikes me as valuable and important, even basic. And yet imposing a ceiling on the level of protection seems (a) difficult to enforce and (b) pointlessly punitive.
This represents a clash of two egalitarianisms, and it is a conflict that arises in many social democracies. If a wealthy person wants to pursue exotic medical treatments on her own dime, does she have a right to do so? Or should she be legally prevented from doing so on grounds of offense against equality?
I like the idea of leveling up. I don’t like the idea of leveling down. And of course the now-rare technologies and techniques deployed by AIG’s Wildfire Protection Unit will become steadily less expensive over time, so much so that they will become increasingly commonplace. At some point in the future, my guess is that publicly-funded Fire Departments will deploy similar resources. But that’s only because a handful of ultracautious pioneers were willing to fund the relevant innovations.
I have a hard time seeing this as a bad thing.
I knew you’d find an unusual angle on the fire news!
The old “love your neighbor” system still works and isn’t limited to the rich. One of our neighbor families decided not to obey the mandatory evacuation order because “the wind isn’t blowing our way right now”. They had no working car so we left them our pick-up truck in case the wind shifted their way. When we were allowed to check on our neighborhood, my husband found they’d been at Costco (our local warehouse club) to load up on food and sundries and eat hot dogs, no doubt chuckling at all of us who evacuated.
— Joules · Oct 26, 11:30 PM · #
During the past week, when schools were closed, we’ve been kept up-to-date on school information through the automated calling system. One glitch for a friend of mine with a 7th grader: the automated absence system dutifully notified her of all of her son’s absences from each period during the past week, to his great amusement.
— Joules · Oct 28, 07:27 PM · #
This is why you’re my favorite conservative. From the article, it appears that the private company relieved some of the pressure from the public one, meaning that the fires got contained much more quickly. Why anyone would gripe about something that actually worked and had a postive externality is completely beyond me. It’s not like there was no one fighting the fires for those who couldn’t pay.
— Karen · Oct 29, 08:27 PM · #