Unless the fire service is paired with insurance covering the cost of a rebuild? But I don't think the original fire services offered that.
The incentives are very clear, if nobody does it, no fire brigades will exist. (I can also imagine other reasons, e g. membership might have been required by some law or by association.) And in the end every fire which is extinguished is a fire which didn't spread.
Just some little aside, today there are people who do firefighting for free. What are the incentives for that?
Yeah it sounds to me from the article like the insurance was for the rebuild, and the firefighting was something the insurance company did to reduce their payouts.
So I imagine if you didn't have insurance, you still were at more risk than if you did, similar to now, because the fire dept isn't going to save everything every time.
I suspect not, because property ownership in England used to be secret - ie. Even the government may not have known who owned land. And if you don't know who owns it, who must pay the bill?
The coverage is apparently to pay for damages. It's not fire insurance, it's property insurance, in case of fire.