its peak government.
All paid for by our centrally-planned, socialized financial system: unbacked, fiat money, manipulated interest rates, and unlimited government debt.
We need more firefighters because two EMS can no longer lift the average obese American.
I’m not in a city with paid firefighters but they spend a fair amount of time responding to accidents.
“...obstinate unions...”
Might be more like aggressive, sullen, boldly assertive, pushy...
IMHO
How many of that increase are paramedics? Since fire departments provide ambulance services now?
I noticed that nowhere in the article did the author normalize ‘fires’ with absolute acreage ablaze. Yellowstone was a ‘fire’. Smoldering weeds by the highway from a dropped cigarette is a ‘fire’. This article is essentially an anti-firefighter union screed, not that I’m a big fan of unions, public sector or otherwise.
In Indianapolis, the “Solution” to the Fire Department’s Budget and retirement underfunding issue was to take over 7 of the 8 Township Fire Departments, many volunteer, thus increasing the number of people “Paying in” to the retirement Program.
like teachers.....used to be that you had 35 kids in one room....and yet the single nun in front of the room could handle them all...
“If you fund them, they will hire more govt. employees”
When you need them you want them to be there and ready.
Answer: Public Employee Unions. And they are in the process of bankrupting the cities and counties where they work. The current municipal bankruptcies in California show that the cops and the FF’s comprise 75 to 80% of the bankrupt citie’s budgets. And it’s not going to go away quietly, because of the attendant pension bomb that’s attached.
This really misses a giant point. We call them fire departments because of the culture. But from the 1940s, they have flipped and usually 90% or their runs are emergency medicine and rescue, usually car wrecks.
This article is garbage statistically. His point may hold, but what needs to be counted is the number of rescue and EMS calls. If that is dropping, then we can talk, but it isn’t.
But statistically counting fires to decide if you have too many firemen is silly. That is usually far less than 10% of the calls in this modern era. Alarms, building codes, sprinkler systems, better appliances, have made fires go away.
But the EMS side of the house has exploded in demand, and in capability.
Hey, it’s working! There are so many firefighters that the fires are scared to death, afraid to flare up!
;^)