{"id":207213,"date":"2026-03-06T11:10:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T11:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/207213\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T11:10:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T11:10:08","slug":"78-year-old-nebraska-woman-billed-3-times-by-california-fire-department-she-never-heard-of-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/207213\/","title":{"rendered":"78-year-old Nebraska woman billed 3 times by California fire department she never heard of"},"content":{"rendered":"

OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT<\/a>\/Gray News) – A bill that is stamped past due would get anyone\u2019s attention, but an older woman in Nebraska refused to pay for an emergency response in a city 1,500 miles away. <\/p>\n

Linda Johnson has lived all 78 of her years in Omaha and never wished she could be a California girl.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never been in California. I have a cousin living in California, but I don\u2019t want to go to California,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n

\"LindaLinda Johnson has lived all 78 of her years in Omaha and never wished she could be a California girl.Billed three times for a call she didn\u2019t make<\/p>\n

Johnson has now received a bill three times for a first responder fee of $353 for fire department emergency service on Dec. 15, 2025, by the city of Roseville, California.<\/p>\n

Johnson\u2019s son, Ronald Trammel, said he knows she was not there.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know for a fact that she was never in California on December, that month my mom was here,\u201d Trammel said.<\/p>\n

Johnson said she recognized the bill as an error, but grew concerned as the notices kept coming.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know it wasn\u2019t me. It might have been an error, and then they keep coming and now they tell me it\u2019s past due,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Trammel called the billing service for the city of Roseville.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour bill is for the cost recovery of the fire engine\u2019s medical response,\u201d a recorded message said.<\/p>\n

Convincing the Roseville Fire Department to stop billing became an emergency call for Johnson.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey might send it to a collection agency or credit agency,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Expert: Don\u2019t panic<\/p>\n

Nebraska Debt Relief credit expert Gale Streff reviewed the bill.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t panic, for sure, and even when it goes to a collection company, they have to send out a dunning letter,\u201d Streff said. \u201cThat\u2019s their legal requirement to say, \u2018Hey, is this your debt or not?\u2019 And you can say, \u2018No, it\u2019s not my debt.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Bill voided after First Alert 6 inquiry<\/p>\n

First Alert 6 contacted the Roseville Fire Department. A spokesperson said it was an error involving a single bill and that the city worked with its billing vendor to correct the mistake. <\/p>\n

The bill has since been voided. No payment is due, and the department apologized for any distress the error caused Johnson.<\/p>\n

\u201cGot the problem solved. I really appreciate it. It\u2019s a load off my back. I\u2019ve got enough bills. I\u2019ve got enough problems. I don\u2019t need some in Roseville, which I\u2019ve never heard of,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n

The Roseville Fire Department and its billing vendor have now heard of Johnson, who lives in Nebraska, not in California.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 WOWT via Gray Local Media, Inc. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT\/Gray News) – A bill that is stamped past due would get anyone\u2019s attention, but an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207214,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[95563,7,9,8,13992,35338,10563,17677,14285,5268],"class_list":["post-207213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-billing","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-credit","tag-error","tag-mistake","tag-nebraska","tag-omaha","tag-roseville"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}