This was a tax paid department funded by property taxes paid by residents of their fire district! The fire apparently occurred in a neighbor area that was not covered by its own fire district. Very few fire departments will respond to such areas unless there is a life and safety threat. The response policy is set by an elected fire board, not by the fire chief, and the elected board has a responsibility to their own taxpayers to send the funds they receive appropriately. Equipment and personnel are purchased and positioned to protect the residents of the fire district, if those resources are routinely sent out of district, their are fewer resources to respond to emergencies in their own district, putting their own residents at risk.
That being said, a policy of responding to neighboring unprotected areas for an annual fee, however helpful it might have sounded at first, is going to put that department in an awkward position and has to potential to blow up into a real negative PR issue, as seems to have happened here. The most likely outcome of this unfortunate event is that the fire district will stop accepting fees to protect houses in the neighboring areas, in hopes that those neighboring areas will either set up their own fire districts, or ask to be annexed into an existing one.
