[quote=davelj][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.[/quote]
In general, volunteer departments are in rural areas where paid fire departments are not needed, or where they can’t afford one. If you look at a map of the U.S., you’ll quickly see why we appear to have such a large volunteer force. Things are different from department to department, but in many (most?) cases, these departments would not have a staffed station. If a call comes in, the volunteers carry radios around with them and they meet where the call is located (usually one or two will go to the station first to get the engine, or it’s possible someone might bring the engine home). Can you imagine the reponse times in an urban/suburban setting?
In urban/suburban areas, if there is a volunteer component to a paid department, it would be used for training new recruits. Of course, the promise/hope of a job in the paid force is the incentive that makes these kids work for “free” (it still costs the department WRT administrative and training costs, equipment, insurance, etc.). If they don’t think the volunteer experience will land them a job, or significantly increase their chances, I guarantee you there would be precious few full-time volunteers, if any (and the ones who would volunteer F/T are the weird “groupie” types that are actually very dangerous — nobody wants to hire those).
