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By SARAH NETTER~ABC News
It came in the mail less than a month after Darline Fairchild watched her family’s home go up in flames — a bill for the nearly $28,000 it cost the fire department to extinguish the blaze.
“I felt my body turn cold and I just broke out into a sweat,” Fairchild told ABCNews.com. “It was awful. I said, ‘It’s got to be a mistake.’”
But it wasn’t a mistake. The Fairchilds, of New Castle, Ind., were just one of a growing number of fire and accident victims across the country who are being billed for fire department services once funded solely through taxpayer money.
Already banned in several states, the practice of charging to respond to house fires and car accidents — dubbed a “crash tax” or an “accident tax” — has horrified victims and earned the ire of insurance lobbyists who say their member companies are being targeted to make up for budget shortfalls.
