That said, when disaster DOES strike, you couldn't pay me enough to do their job. Witness the Trade Center on 9/11. Is it worth it? Hard to say. But I think it bears a close, close re-examination. WITHOUT the unions butting in.
9/11 showed how absurd it was when the city was asked how they were going to replace all of the firemen who had been killed; the initial response was “We won’t”. Even afterwards, as the city proceeded with a plan to close firehouses throughout the city, the firemen used 9/11 as a rallying point to justify their obsolete jobs (at least in those numbers); somehow the deaths of those brave men entitled many of those remaining to an easy, overstaffed job (and nobody was allowed to question that). Note the insistence during the rubble removal that a detail of firemen be on hand to carry out any firefighter remains removed; Mayor Giuliani rightly opposed this but was shouted down, and now we’ve been presented with a bill for the health effects on those very firemen. 9/11 really brought out the best & worst in them.
In my area some towns have regionalized (after much resistance), while others are looking at a paid/volunteer hybrid (which is already in place a lot for EMTs). I think once everyone currently “on the job” is assured that they’ll be allowed to “attrite out” through retirement (including those that are 25 years old now), the resistance to these measures drops; unlike our laid-off police officers who are fielding offers from other parts of the country (who spare themselves the cost of training new officers by hiring some with experience), I don’t know that many municipalities are looking for paid firemen anymore (or ever were). Any that are considering starting paid departments should avoid a lot of headaches by immediately including ambulance services as part of their jobs and the like; once you have a caste set up with a sense of entitlement, it can be very difficult to go back or add responsibilites (teachers being the best example of this).