Hmmmm.... 'tis truly a case of bureaucracy gone to bureaucrazy, but I see the differences between what's been brought up.
These are cases where a house has been built outside the boundaries of a town or village. The village provides fire services to its residents, but since this house is outside the boundaries, the inhabitants are not residents of the cities.
The city, seeing the proliferation of stupid lawsuits, has probably realized that fighting fires is an expensive proposition, and has decided to reduce its exposure to only those people who are its own citizens.
This guy isn't. He may not have realized it until too late. And there will be a lot of fingerpointing.
Unfortunately, doing what is right (fighting the fire) may mean losing your job. And given the nature of the issue, we're probably not talking about a place where there are lots of other firefighting jobs available.
Would you be willing to give up your job and career?
Now, the 9/11 tie-in is different. The tragic events of 9/11 did occur inside an area serviced by a fire department. That fire department accepted help from other departments and volunteers, but there was already a city obligation to serve the area. The fire department was just sorting through additional volunteers. This occurred outside a city, where there was no fire department to accept volunteers.
Tragic, yes. Stupid, yes. Avoidable, yes. Inevitable in today's lawsuit-happy society... yes.
If only saner heads could prevail on all sides...
