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Column: Roger's Soapbox
Heroes, Seen and Unseen
Roger Crombie is a United Kingdom-based columnist for Risk & Insurance®. He can be reached at [email protected].
Recently, I moved from London to a small town on the south coast of England called Eastbourne. It’s a retirement community, akin to Florida but without the sun, sand (the beaches are pebbles) or cocaine proceeds that have fueled Miami’s growth.
The other day, two men in crash helmets were peering into my living room window. Nothing very unusual there, I suppose. Except that perverts rarely wear crash helmets, I’m guessing.
Because of the enhanced real estate values in a giant metropolis such as London, I was able to swap a modest 750-square-foot apartment in social housing for something rather grander: a giant penthouse, hard on the English Channel. My nearest neighbor to the south is France.
My new abode is a glorious folly, absurdly flashy and even slightly regal. My ‘Bourne Identity’ is that of king.
The apartment is on the ninth floor, which for reasons best known to themselves, the British refer to as the eighth floor. One would think that, on that basis, the first floor should be called the zeroth floor and the ninth should perhaps be known as the sky floor, but it seems logic is not applied in such matters.
The apartment is as far into the heavens as a man may climb in Eastbourne, which made the spectre of two men in crash helmets peering in, well … something of an anomaly, to say the least.
Were they 80 feet tall? On stilts? Superman and the Green Lantern on patrol?
They were, in fact, supermen of a sort. They were officers of the East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service. They were perched, rather precariously, I thought, atop an aerial ladder, an extending metal pole thingie, a new piece of kit being tested on Eastbourne’s tallest building. My building, that is.
Wobbling all the way, they roamed around the space between my building and the one next door.
From time to time, they stopped so close to (ahem) one of my balconies that we were able to have a pleasant chat. They reluctantly turned down the offer of a cup of tea because their boss was keeping an eye on them from the zeroth floor.
I have nothing but respect for firemen. The word “heroes” barely begins to describe them. Not just because they rush into burning buildings to save children and cats, if the movies are to be believed, but because they wobble around in a steel box 80 feet off the ground in case some old fool like me accidentally sets fire to his home and then can’t get out.
It struck me later that firemen fulfill a role exactly analogous to that of insurers: They take on the risks that no one else wants to carry. If your building burns down and you’re fried to a crisp, all the insurance in the world won’t make any difference.
Despite the dangers, firemen help you avoid that fate, so that you may cash in on the insurance.
Yet, where firemen are rightly regarded as heroes, insurers tend not to be. At best, they are considered, as someone said recently, staid. But when catastrophe strikes, we turn to firemen as well as insurers to seek relief.
Maybe it would help their image if insurers wore fluorescent orange jackets instead of boring suits. An aerial ladder outside every insurance office? It might be worth a shot.
