Responsibility

So yesterday I got into an argument about who was responsible for the tragedy of two children dying while adults squabbled:

While the house burned early Tuesday, the truck sat in the snow outside the home of the band’s mechanic. The volunteer fire department in nearby Loon Lake didn’t respond, because service to the reserve was cut weeks earlier over unpaid bills.

The discussion was about who had the greater responsibility for the deaths, the band which didn't pay its bills or train its own firefighters, or the Loon Lake volunteer fire department who went back to sleep when called out to the fire.
I don't know the answer. But I do know that somebody has to be the adult here -- maybe the provincial government rural municipality department, maybe the FSIN, somebody -- to step up when relationships between bands and nearby towns deteriorate.

“The bottom line is: Two children died and the adults have to sort it out,” Bob Pringle, Saskatchewan’s children’s advocate, said in an interview Thursday. “It clearly has to stop and it’s not going to stop unless we do something differently.”

But doesn't it always seems that somebody has to die before we are willing to do things differently?