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Comment by mtnGoat | Hacker News Reader

Playing devils advocate here but maybe we have too many fire fighters?

I have four good friends that work in metropolitan fire houses all making well into the six figures. They constantly joke about how they get paid to do nothing and haven’t been on a fire in years, mainly they respond to calls at old folks homes. Oh and the only work a four or five days a month.

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I think the root cause is that you lump fire and EMS into the same basket. You don’t need six qualified firefighters on a half million dollar pumper to attend a nanna down call.

Here in Australia the ambulance service is totally separate to the fire services. The public calls the same number (000) but after that it’s separate dispatch centres, different staff, different depots.

From the fire side we occasionally get called to assist the ambulance service with carrying out people who are injured somewhere way off down a bushwalking or mountain biking track. We’ll very rarely get called to a lift assist for someone that’s fallen in an aged care facility.

The ambulance service in NSW has a whole set of problems around capacity and poor working conditions for staff, of course, but that’s another story.

>>> You don’t need six qualified firefighters on a half million dollar pumper to attend a nanna down call.

A friend of mine is a former EMT. He told me that they would usually send out 4 people if possible, because in fact you do need that many if someone has had a heart attack while sitting on the toilet in an upstairs apartment, and weighs 350 pounds. Getting people out of their homes can actually be dangerous for the EMT's.

In my locale, all of the firefighters are also EMTs. Same service. When I had my medical "event," a fire truck showed up first because the ambulance was on another call. They started working on me right away, then the ambo showed up and hauled me out.

We need enough reserve firefighting capacity to respond to infrequent major fires. But when they're not fighting fires or training then they might as well respond to other emergencies.

You are right. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/07/fi...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2015/09/04/05316abe-...

Firefighters are a profession that is almost purely a good for society. I wouldn't support a reduction in firefighters until every single other member of the government was gone. In the post apocalypse I hope it is firefighters who are running the provisional government.

Emergency services in the US have gone from 80:20 fire:medical to 80:20 medical:fire over the last 70 years or so. We retain the framework of firefighting, but devote those valuable and important resources to using custom built fire trucks much of the time as taxis staffed by paramedics.

It seems like you still need fire trucks though even if only 20% of your incidents are fires.

> Playing devils advocate here but maybe we have too many fire fighters?

It sounds like the type of service that you want to over-provision for. What if a major fire broke out and you needed all of them?

Have a reserve, like the military?

The only time this really happens is wildland fires, which are historically understaffed and underfunded anyways.

9/11 took every firefighter

This is exactly the problem, I guess. Demand for fire fighters is so incredibly spikey that there is no such thing as “the right amount.” We’re trying to adapt an economic system that’s designed for factories and farms, and fire fighting just doesn’t work like that.

9/11 is an extreme edge case, I would say.

I was with you until that last line. I know two fire fighters; they work a standard 160 a month (though the schedule itself is kind of bonkers).

These guys have to work 40 hours per pay period, which is two 24 hours shifts every two weeks. This is just slightly more than 4 days a month. They will sometimes work four days in a row, the last two days of a period and then the first two of the next and can go 20+days between shifts.

160 hours isn’t much when you are getting paid to sleep, eat and hangout. It’s just 6 days.

And yet, the majority of the country doesn't have full-time professional firefighters. The majority of firefighters are volunteers who are often working for poorly funded departments.

Many places they get paid per call. So maybe thats a factor.

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