When you are having that heart attack, or you are trapped in your car, a collapsed building, or a burning warehouse, who do you want to come rescue you? The lowest paid, least trained person? Or will you want the educated, experienced, motivated professional with 15 to 20 years of experience?
You will get what you pay for. If you think our job pays so well, and is so easy, why aren’t you doing it? Look at other jobs with similar experience, education, and working hours, and you will see that firefighting is right in line with them.
I Have.
35 years in the fire service including time as a wildland firefighter, a full 20+year career in a big city department and 10 years as Chief of the department here in my hometown.
Believe me, I know the frustration of working for low pay as well as a public that doesn't seem to appreciate your work.
I also know the frustration of trying to provide the best service possible within the bound of what a community is willing to give up in the way of taxes. As a conservative, it is quite a tightrope to walk in your desire to keep taxes low while providing the service that your employers (the community) expects. The entire basis of the ISO rating system is to give the community the ability to decide (vote) how much fire service they want to pay for. Its called democracy.
Unfortunately, there will always be people (like a few of the posters on this thread) that want "The lowest paid, least trained person" and want it for free. They are also the ones that bitch the most when it takes a little longer to arrive on a call or their house burns due to a lack of personnel, adequate equipment or water supply.
Actually, in my experience the best department consists of a mix of the older, experienced members and the newbys that are full of book learning and keep the "more experienced" members honest. There is nothing worse that a bunch of burned out, unmotivated fossils on the same shift.
I see by your screen name that you are an EMT. From that alone you must be aware that the real rewards of our profession don't come in the form of a paycheck, but in the relief of pain and suffering, the comfort of victims families and the preservation of life and property.
I have found that the most successful people in the fire (and EMS) service are the ones that realize early in their career that this job is not about us, but in service to our community.