Another way the rich are different:

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-richfire26oct26,0,3352683.story?coll=la-home-center

Another way the rich are different: 'concierge-level' fire protection

When Southland clients' multimillion-dollar homes were threatened, insurer AIG dispatched crews with fire retardant.

By Kimi Yoshino, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 26, 2007
RANCHO SANTA FE, CALIF. -- Bryce Carrier's cellphone rang at 3 a.m.: Help! The fire is almost to my house.

Carrier hopped into his heavy-duty red Ford F-550 and sped to northeast Poway, dodging fallen eucalyptus and heading straight toward the wind-whipped blaze. He arrived to find flames marching up an embankment toward the multimillion-dollar home.

Yanking out the hose in the back of his truck, he began applying Phos-Chek fire retardant along the perimeter of the property, the shrubs and the roof. When the flames hit the milky white liquid, they stopped.

Another home saved.

Carrier is a certified firefighter, but he doesn't work for a government agency. He's an employee of Firebreak Spray Systems, which partners with the insurance company American International Group Inc. to protect the mansions of the moneyed.

AIG's Wildfire Protection Unit, part of its Private Client Group, is offered only to homeowners in California's most affluent ZIP Codes -- including Malibu, Beverly Hills, Newport Beach and Menlo Park -- and a dozen Colorado resort communities. It covers about 2,000 policyholders, who pay premiums of at least $10,000 a year and own homes with a value of at least $1 million.

follow the link for more.

http://www.phoschek.com/faq/environment.asp

The long term, or continual, exposure of workers to the surfactant ingredient which is present in Phos-Chek WD 881 concentrate and its solutions has been tested also. It was found not to pose a significant hazard to human health during its manufacture or subsequent use. It, and all other ingredients present in WD 881, have been studied by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and approved for use in various types of indirect food additives.

But it is also a sad commentary on an economic system where the rich get richer and the poor get fucked!

But then, it is reality. Learn to live with it.

Everyone should have access to this technology.

instead of old fashioned water?

and taxes would have to raised to equip fire departments with enough of it - and we can't have that now, can we? :sarcasm:

that would be an expense covered by state/local taxes.

Though I'm afraid that "no new taxes" idea is rampant across the country. God knows it's caused problems in Minnesota - where the governor has now back pedaled on the need to raise the gas tax and there's no way he'll let the income tax be raised.

I lived north of Chattanooga (in Hixon, if anyone knows the area) back in the 70s. The volunteer fire company was our only protection and they were by subscription. If a fire broke out at a non subscriber's house, they would respond only to protect the covered houses.

We also paid for garbage collection and similar services.

Taxes, of course, were dirt cheap.

Subscriber fire brigades are an old tradition. Many old houses still have the fire subscriber metal plaques on them.

Setting up neighborhood pumping stations every few blocks so a sprinkler perimeter of fire retardant could be laid down behind those homes bordering canyons just by flipping a switch.

It would save them and the government a boatload of money in the long run.

Cell phones used to be the province of the rich, too. And not too many years ago.

Same with air bags and anti lock brakes.

A lot cheaper to pay someone to spray some anti fire gunk for a few grand, then to cut a check for a few million.

Sorry you see this as class warfare.

Class warfare? I quoted an article from the LA Times. I never said anything about class warfare. sheeeesh! :shrug: