Posted on 11/22/2008 2:15:39 PM PST by Daffynition
ZEPHRYHILLS - Henry Ben Morgan wanted to save his pets.
Instead, he ended up in handcuffs and at least three dogs and a cat perished in the blaze that destroyed his home.
Just before 11 a.m. today, firefighters were called to 35615 Chester Drive and arrived 12 minutes later, finding the home engulfed in flames.
At some point, Morgan's wife arrived, followed by Morgan a few minutes later, said Pasco Fire Rescue Assistant Chief Mike Ciccarello.
Morgan started running for the house. Sheriff's deputies and firefighters yelled for him to stay back, but he kept going toward a window.
Deputies and firefighters, according to a report, restrained him so he could not jump through the window and into the blaze.
Morgan, 41, was forcibly removed from the scene, the report states, and was arrested on charges of obstructing the extinguishment of a fire, a felony, and resisting arrest without violence, a misdemeanor, respectively.
He was being held at the Land O' Lakes Jail this evening. Bail was set at $5,150.
About 20 firefighters continued fighting the one-alarm fire but couldn't save the animals or the home, Ciccarello said.
"It looks like a total loss," he said.
The family of five, including two teenage girls and a 7-year-old boy, are being helped by the American Red Cross.
The fire began between a garage-turned-bedroom and a utility room in the small ranch home. The cause was a worn extension cord that had been run under a door, Ciccarello said.
No one was injured.
I think it is impossible for people who believe that humans are different from, and more important than, animals to have a reasoned discussion with people who believe they are precisely the same.
Dogs and cats in some countries are on the daily menu.
It’s stupid behaviour like what posted that gets people killed.
I was a firefighter years ago. And I remember a woman who swerved to miss a cat. She hit an oncoming car headon and killed the man driving.
It was Christmas eve and his car was loaded with toys he was bringing to his kids.
Run over the cat, and stay outside.
Rural fire departments have further distances to cover and therefor have longer response times (12 minutes is pretty good), they are poorly equipped, poorly trained and are usually all volunteers. Considering all that, they do a good job when they can. Also since nobody was home the call most likely came after the fire was well started. The reason I said they sounded like a typical rural fire department is that’s what they sound like, doing the best they can with what they got. Sometimes the best they can do is to keep the fire from spreading.
Pasco man pulled from burning house, sent to jail
By Erin Sullivan, Times staff writer
Saturday, November 22, 2008
ZEPHYRHILLS — A few minutes before 11 o'clock Friday morning, Henry Morgan's wife called his cell phone. When he answered, he could barely make out her voice because she was crying.
"The house is on fire," she shouted.
And then the phone went dead.
Morgan didn't know if she was stuck inside the house. He kept trying to call her back, but her phone wouldn't pick up. He and his wife, Sherry, live in the 1,200-square-foot house with their three children — daughters Brandy, 17, and Sierra, 13, and son Cameron, 7 — along with several cats and dogs. One of the cats had just had kittens.
Morgan jumped in his pickup truck and sped to the house on Chester Drive in Zephyrhills. He and Sherry have been married for 20 years and the house is nearly paid off. But he works in construction and is only getting one or two days of work a week. Sherry, who had always been a stay-at-home mom, went to work at a daycare about a month ago. They didn't want to lose their house to foreclosure, so something had to go.
They canceled their homeowner's insurance.
When Morgan got to the house one side of it was engulfed in flames. There were three firetrucks, two rescue vehicles and tons of emergency workers. Morgan, 41, said he didn't see his wife or children or pets so he thought they were inside the house.
And he ran toward it.
go here for more
http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/fire/article912912.ece
I don’t see where the government has any right to stop a person from putting themselves in danger of getting killed especially if you tell them that saving you is none of their business!
All my life i’ve taken chances of getting hurt or killed if the odds were in my favor and I wasn’t endangering anyone else and it saved time.
Most cases it was something that would be illegal if I told an employee to do it but OSHA couldn’t touch me.
I don’t think you are under any obligation to allow fire department personnel on your property unless the fire is endangering other property. I could be wrong.
But if you're not home and they're already there trying to put out the fire, then what? Make 'em start the fire again because you didn't give them permission to put it out?
If you are at home and then want to keep the FD away so you can watch your house burn, I guess that's okay, but wouldn't you either have gotten your pets out first?
I'm sure the insurance companies would look askance on that.
But if someone is not expecting the insurance company to pay and are willing to take the loss himself, it is his money.
Yes, I think insurers don’t go for turning away firefighters. I guess some people own their property outright and don’t choose to insure it for loss/damage.
The article linked in late in this thread mentioned the owners had cancelled their insurance even though their house wasn’t completely paid off. So they’re not only out the value of their house and contents, they have to pay back the balance to their lender.
Although I think cancelling the insurance while continuing to support at least a dozen pets was financially imprudent, I hope the community will have a collection for them.
A small business in our area burned and was uninsured. Some people tried to get some fund raising done to help the owner out but it didn’t work out too well.
General opinion was that it was pretty stupid to have a business that was uninsured and so I guess a lot of people didn’t feel obligated to bail out someone that irresponsible.
That would include me. If it were like the Amish who didn’t believe in insurance but did believe in helping each other out in situations like that, that would be different.
Yes, sometimes people are in a mood to help the feckless and sometimes they’re not. Our “help the financially foolish” donations go to my mother-in-law :-).
With all due respect, we never know how we will act in a similar situation. If I drove up to my burning house knowing my three little muts were trapped inside, I'd go insane. Not sure I'd do what this gentlemen did, but probably not above it. I'm not going to judge this guy. Law enforcement went way over the top, however. We slap child molesters on the hand and then hand out three charges for a guy that was trying to save part of his family. Insane.
This inability to comprehend the difference between human life and animal life is sadly widespread in Western Civilization.
That’s why we have MSNBC nancy boys decrying Sarah Palin’s interview at a turkey farm, while shrugging at Obama’s embrace of actual infanticide while a state senator.
Do you have four-legged family or are they really just animals to you?
I would knock down, knock out or run over anyone who tried to even think of stopping me from getting to my four-legged family.
The cops got off easy.
Are they worth my life? Hell yes, because they are a part of my life.
Oh dang. :-(
Just what could the PD hope to accomplish by punishing a man who was distraught by adding criminal charges on top of all his other woes?
I can see restraining him at that moment to save his life and that of others. But the rest?
What a-holes.
The question is not “Are they worth your life?” The question is “Are they worth other people’s lives?” Unless you’re alone, and going to remain alone, in a situation that threatens your animals, you will pull others in if you put your life at risk.
It’s been very interesting to learn that there are actually people in the world who think firefighters should possibly die for dogs.
Good observations. And we have people who think it’s fine to use the police power to keep a disabled person from getting water, but would kill us if we let a dog die of thirst. Very strange priorities, in my opinion.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.