The Fire Department stood on principle. It is sad to see someones home go up in flames. By the same token, if they did not pay the fee, they suffer the consequence of no fire protection.
This is not a case of a purely free market, as I suspect the county has monopoly control over fire protection.
Given the current state of our national and local governments, would a system such as this, where fire protection requires a user fee towards a monopoly institution, be acceptable to ancaps and/or minarchists? Or would you prod further for a purely free market?
The only principal the fire department stood on what that they (The people in the fire department) have sources of stolen/tax money that other potiential market participants do not possess and therefore can undercut competition on their user fees. This extra stolen/tax money gives this particular outfit a local monopoly on providing fire protection services which enables this fire department to not care about potiential and current customers. For example the fire department could have charged some amount greater than the user fee for calls where the residents did not pay the user fee. AND that is exactly what the customer did!!!
In a free market there would propably be no recurring fire department fee or it would be coupled to a fire insurance. Essentially, a recurring firedepartment fee is only an insurance.