Five kinds of charging modes for Roman fire fighting compared to domestic fire fighting

Speaking of the professionalization of firefighting, some opponents have always made articles about the charging behavior of certain US fire brigades to frighten anyone who is dissatisfied with the existing system. The United States, which has 30,000 teams, can directly ask the victims for money. More often than not, the most important is to hand over the bills to the victim's insurance company. If no money is received, it will be offset by public finances. Therefore, professional firefighting is not based on fire charges. This is a concept that a small number of people deliberately convey. It is considered that professional firefighting is overheating or worsens. This is a misunderstanding of public firefighting.

I once met a young mother who had just arrived in the United States. She saw her son fall at home and immediately wanted to find 911 help. I was terrified because it was possible to bring a bill to the insurance company and she just arrived. The United States, which has no insurance, is not a joke. Sometimes the public service is not free, so we have to ask the key task for help, not for the cat and dog to find firemen. This is unfair to all taxpayers.

Although you can not pay, it hurts your personal reputation.

To say that the United States is easy to be ostentatious, I'm talking about the source of fire protection in the Roman Republic of Europe. Roman fire had 5 modes, each with its advantages and disadvantages.

The first type, the slave firefighting team founded by Klassou, was charged around fire around 80 BC . Every time he goes to the fire, according to the degree of difficulty in extinguishing the fire, the victim's property is acquired at a low price. The premise is that if you want to lose all, it's better to sell it to me cheaper. After I am rebuilt, I can sell it and earn the cost of maintaining the fire brigade. However, this kind of system has great public grudges. Krassou is therefore famous for a long time ( Crass means “shameless” in English).

In the second case, Lufusi’s slave fire service began free of charge for Roman citizens in 30 BC . Is Lufus a good man? He has his political aspirations and fire fighting is just an election tool. Because of this, his "good intentions" caused Augustus to hate. In 26 BC, he was arrested for unwarranted crimes, died in prison, and became a victim of fire fighting.

The third kind, Lufusi died. The fire problem in Rome was not resolved. So Augustus founded a fire-fighting team of 600 slaves in 23 BC , according to the model of Lufoth , known as the "public family", which means "public servants." This model worked for 30 years (just one fire cycle). In 6 AD , a catastrophic fire destroyed about a quarter of the city of Rome. The public opinion was awkward and no longer kept silent as usual. The Senate takes the opportunity to increase taxes. Because the slaves did not care about the citizens’ property and did not care about it, they fought their way in the fire fighting operations on the fire and often avoided it. Although there was a danger of killing them, they could not avoid the escaping behavior. Therefore, the fire brigade composed of slaves could not satisfy Rome’s need. Augustus dismissed the fire-fighting team composed of slaves and reorganized the watchmen or Vigiles Corps , composed of liberated slaves (ie free people) . This team was very efficient and lasted for 560 years (?) .

The fourth team is the Warder Corps. It was initially a liberated slave or a promised liberated slave (but it needed to commit to 26 years of fire service, so no one called. Later it changed to 6 years in service for free status), and then The civilians, and later the nobles, their social status has been rising.

The problem is that the efficiency of firefighting has gone up, ordinary Romans with a keen sense of cost have quickly awakened, and the cost of maintaining a public firefighting team is quite high, so firefighters have other responsibilities.

At first they were sent to the street at night, dressed in uniforms and carrying buckets and an axe, in order that they could detect the early signs of the fire and could immediately open fire. Soon they gave special tasks to arrest the slaves who escaped. This public security function can only be performed at night and there are additional police officers during the day. Then they were called to a large Roman bathhouse to watch the bather's clothing and prevent theft. In this way they expanded the function of the police and became the predecessor of the two-in-one police firefighters who were seen throughout the 19th century. These changes did not prevent the citizens from complaining endlessly. They felt that spending on fire was too high and they were too wasteful of manpower and time. This attitude is not surprising. Most Romans grew up under the tenets of hard work. When they saw a group of paying people sitting around with few officers, they felt very uncomfortable. Under the support of Rome's local taxes, the watchmen's legion was actually a professional firefighter organized in accordance with the military. This is similar to the tour of the Song Army.

The fifth model of the Roman Republic is not in Rome but in Asia Minor. According to the "Little Plini Letters", in 112 AD , the local governor, Jorge Pliny, wanted Emperor Trajan to let him fire:

“As the ministers went out for inspections, a fire broke out in the city of Nicky Midah, and some private houses were burned down. There were two public buildings. Although there are roads between the buildings, there is still no help. The futures are windy, but if the non-crowd people stand by, they will not The spread is so wide that all people say that the masses do not view the scene and refuse to save the fire. In addition, there are no fire-fighting tools in the city. I will order people to be ordered. Please ask if you can set up a fire brigade and limit it to 150. I It can be guaranteed that all the players used will really help the fire, and the privilege granted will not be abused. It is not difficult to supervise these people."

The emperor's approval is negative:

“According to the existing fire brigade model, setting up a fire brigade at Nickydia is of course a good idea; but it must be borne in mind that it is these groups that have provoked many political turmoil in your area and convened a group of people to make them The common goal, no matter what kind of points they are given, for what motives, they will soon become a political group. Therefore, provide necessary firefighting equipment, guide the use of property owners, and make them call upon crowds when necessary. Helping one another is the best policy.

That is to say, for those places where public finances are insufficient (outside Rome), the firefighting countermeasures are the methods that Hu Xie took in Nanping, Fujian Province in 1158 , only giving tools, not organizing and training. Under the high pressure of the Song Dynasty government, did you organize firefighting instead of rebelling? Therefore, outside Kaifeng and Hangzhou, there is no government-run fire protection, only the Baojia system (the Northern Song Dynasty Wujia system, the Southern Song Dynasty Shijia system).

After the streets of Ostia in the Roman suburbs were unearthed, they reflected the city layout and fire situation during the Roman era.

If the above five models represent the human social response to fire, then the pre-liberation fire will probably be the first model (Do you think that Tianjin's fire will really be free? People are gangsters. (of your property level) or the second (if the place has a rich man, or a salt merchant). The Song Dynasty fire fighting mission is the fourth species in the capital and the fifth in the region. Yuan Shikai's firefighting model was the third one. Where United States public finances are relatively good, such as New York City, they are all occupational firefighting (fourth); however, in those rural areas where people are sparsely populated and lacking industrial tax sources, voluntary firefighting is a typical fifth mode.

There is no free lunch in the world. We feel free of charge for firefighting because the state allocates funds from military spending, places purchase equipment from taxes, and jointly provides free public firefighting.

The problem is that now the concept of public property increasing order Emaoagou really hit 119 for help, in the end you do not charge to close it? Occasionally once or twice, this is our love, military and civilians!

The problem is that without the supervision of insurance companies, how do you judge whether this is a real fire alarm or an A-cat service? The domestic firefighting team has always been looking forward to throwing away the fire protection task and escaping the rescue mission because it is too trivial to allow people to work full-time at full time, but they are given subsidies for slaves. Any party will feel dissatisfied. The real problem with China's firefighting is that the people have money and are not happy with any loss; the fire attendance task has doubled, but the treatment has not changed, and "escape firefighting" is a natural tendency.

There are more and more national fiscal subsidies for firefighting, and more and more compensation tasks (such as high-rise fires in Shanghai) must be undertaken for firefighting mistakes.

Local finances have increasingly invested in equipment, but the mobility of personnel cannot be solved, and the efficiency of equipment can never go up. This is an all-in-one solution, just because most people expect free services. In fact, how can the world have free services? In order to get free services, you have to pay more, support more civil servants, and provide more tigers to get a bit of a level of public service. It is impossible for the national firefighting to be in line with Shanghai (spending is tight). It is also impossible for Shanghai to look at the whole country (can't afford it). The concept of free firefighting is the key to making it difficult to raise the national level of firefighting. This is my observation. . This is the intrinsic motive force of firefighting reform. The rise of big powers and the internal changes are inevitable.

The information in this article comes from the Internet and was reorganized and edited by China Rescue Equipment Network.