[quote=CA renter]
Again, these positions are NOT the same as professional firefighters/paramedics. They don’t have anywhere near the same education/training, experience, professionalism, etc. These are training programs for people who want to become professional firefighters/paramedics.
[/quote]
Are you sure? This site for Pasadena’s fire department makes it sound like the volunteers provide all of the fire and related services to the City of Pasadena. I would think that a wealthy city like Pasadena would pay their fire department if they felt there was some quality discrepancy between the volunteers and the “professionals.” What am I missing here?
[Edit – this is Pasadena, Texas! Not Pasadena, California… whoops! So skip to the final paragraph below…]
In the larger scheme of things, are all of the 73% of volunteer fire fighters in the U.S. simply being trained to be paid fire fighters? I doubt that’s the case, but I could be wrong.
