I SAY GET THE GOVERNMENT OUT OF FIREFIGHTING. Set up a voucher system. Set it up so that citizens have to fork over part of the cost so that somebody will come put their house out if it starts to burn. Once people start having to cough up the dough every month so their memories won't turn to ashes, I bet more people would be careful about leaving the stove on.

POSTSCRIPT: I'm just kidding up there, of course. But you might be interested to learn that we Charlestonians actually tried private firefighting at one point in our city's long and willfully eccentric history, and the results were, shall we say, disappointing, as block upon block burned while private firemen stood at the ready, waiting for the flames to spread to one of "their" houses or buildings.

Needless to say, this early experiment in privatization was abandoned faster than you can say "Milton Friedman," and, in one of history's mildly amusing turns, the people of our fair city eventually went on to build a thriving tourist economy around the grand homes and churches that no longer burned to the ground every time somebody got careless with a match.

Hmmm.... I wonder if there's some kind of a lesson in there someplace?