Is that because the firefighters are bored or because they want to show the public that they're doing something valuable before the public realizes that we don't need so many of them?
Firefighters do a lot more than you probably realize. For instance, who is carrying grandma with her broken hip down the rickety stairs from her top floor bathroom? It's probably not just the two-person ambulance crew. You going to get grandpa to help?
These are the kinds of routine jobs that fire crews handle everyday that are invaluable to society.
Don't forget all of those cats stuck in tree that get rescued by local FD. Recent stories of pets in storm drains being rescued as well. But as someone else already posted, most are responding to auto accidents. Nothing as useful for redirecting traffic and shielding first responders than a giant firetruck blocking the lanes.
I realize it which is why their strategy is a good one. Does it make sense for the people who are able to do that job also all be able to put out fires?
I think someone that can carry grandma down the stairs and also occasionally put out a catastrophic fire is a pretty reasonable and efficient use of taxpayer money. The alternative would be what, having two different people to do those things?
It depends. In Ontario (or at least Toronto where I live), the fire department and ambulance services are separate. The paramedics are chronically underfunded and the result is that the fire department is constantly running up milage on multiple expensive and massive fire trucks for routine calls that should just have been a paramedic. This also compounds traffic issues when they park at their destination.
It makes sense for them to automatically show up for some situations (eg car accidents), but there should be a properly funded triage system.
Same goes for the police, which are often called for situations where there should be some other social workers available (again, there are exceptions where police should also be present in those situations).
Where I live, the fire department has rescue trucks which sometimes can be large (like a ladder-less fire truck) but can also be as small as a heavy duty work truck. Some departments have enough money to have all kinds of various vehicles for special situations while other departments have just enough to own one vehicle to cover as many needs as possible. It would make more sense to buy something smaller but can they justify the cost to the county or city? And in cities, they still need the big ladder truck and likely need to host an ambulance in the station and probably a fire chief vehicle too. The money is limited as well as the space. I'm sure cities are already rethinking what they actually need now versus 50 years ago. I've already seen paramedic vehicles that are not ambulances, they look like a work van or truck, just enough for two paramedics and enough supplies to treat someone that doesn't need to immediately go to the hospital or to serve as an auxiliary during a mass casualty event. The truck is way cheaper than an ambulance.
>It depends. In Ontario (or at least Toronto where I live), the fire department and ambulance services are separate. The paramedics are chronically underfunded
That isn't cost effective. They need the large trucks just in case - even though realistically they are never used. A large truck isn't that much more expensive to drive than a small one, and in any case if the large truck isn't used for more than a couple days you need to take it for a drive - ensure all the operators know how to drive it and if something broke (sitting is harmful to moving parts - wear is worse, but sitting is harmful) you want to find out and fix it right away.
Which is to say the small cheaper car only makes sense after you have enough large ones and conclude you still need more cars.
Maybe? Firefighting is extremely physically demanding, which is why you'll often see firehouses with built in gym, and rarely see a fat fire fighter. So that physical capability can be used in other circumstances.
Also, firefighters need to know how to dismantle a house quickly to support their operations. So if the door needs to come off the hinges to get grandma down the stairs, firefighters will be prepared for that and have it done in 30 seconds
Sure. And that's carrying someone out of a burning building. Most of the time the building you're getting someone out of isn't burning and you don't need someone trained to fight fires to do that and that person will cost less to employ.
Powerlifting doesn't teach you the technique and spotting required to walk backwards down a staircase while holding a stretcher above your head so that grandma, who is in extreme pain, doesn't slide off and tumble to the bottom.
Neither does firefighting. The point is if we don't need as many firefighters to fight the fewer fires we have, there are more cost-effective ways of maintaining a group of first responders for medical emergencies.
You must be enthusiastic about people using ERs when they have strep throat, right?
Let me think for a few seconds about ideas. Fitter EMTs who can assist people in more demanding physical situations. A subset of firefighters who can provide medical assistance but don't need the complete fire training curriculum and so can be paid less. Maintaining the ratio of firefighters and stations which was previously found satisfactory but adjusting it for requiring fewer of them since we have fewer fires.
The problem is that the need is spiky. You don't need many of them until an old apartment building or factory catches fire because of cladding made in the 70s.
They are like seat belts, or audit logs. You don't need so many of them, right up until you do.
Mass casualty events are rare, but you damned sure want a good response when one happens or the losses will be high. It's a never ending cycle that people seem to suffer from.
OMG so many people died, we need to spare no expense in insuring this doesn't happen again.
[time passes]
OMG these emergency services are so expensive, why do we even have them.
Ahh yes, the old "why do we have all these inefficient empty hospital beds???" problem.
On a fundamental level, efficiency and resilience are always a trade-off. A perfectly efficient system also tends to be perfectly brittle! In practice everything needs some buffer.
We shouldn't aim for "as close to 100% efficiency on <metric> as possible," but rather "lowest risk-adjusted expected cost, including mishaps." The latter correctly prices rare events.
> Except if you are hitting 100% utilization at any point, there isn't really any slack.
Yes, that's why the phrase "when the need lessens" is important.
Besides that, it may be a reasonable decision that 95% utilization is acceptable in order to spend the additional money on something that provides more benefit.
>> We're facing the issue in Ontario where firefighters are bored out of their minds and are being used as first responders for anything and everything. They show up to random fender benders.
> Is that because the firefighters are bored or because they want to show the public that they're doing something valuable before the public realizes that we don't need so many of them?
If they need to do that, it's not because of the public. It's probably because they got a "challenge" from some clever idiot with a business or economics degree.
Also, people typically want something valuable to do, so they go find it. That's not something the proponents of our coming AI utopia seem to understand.
I think that's being a bit too much here. I can't speak for Ontario fire departments, but in the US, major cities have specialized trucks with crews trained for things specific to auto accidents. Hazmat training to deal with leaking fuel/oil/fluids to stay safe and clean up.
Keeping firefighters from being bored is why you see them playing pickleball or other sporty things around the firehouse. If your firefighters are that bored, you should look at having the chief replaced with someone better trained. Especially for the city the size of Ontario.
Firefighters have interesting working rules. They are expected to work 8 hour days, but they are in the fire house for multi-day shifts.
Their work 8 hours which is a mix of physical fitness training (carefully designed to keep them in shape without being too wore out to respond if something does happen as they finish training) and training. They have a lot of time to learn about all the latest medical emergency treatments, the latest in fire fighting. They get constant CPR refreshers because even though they are often first on the scene when CPR is needed it still doesn't happen often enough to remember.
The other 16 hours - 8 of them are sleeping. the other 8 are theirs to do whatever. Any good firehouse will keep plenty of games (TV, board games, pickelball...) so that they are not bored.
You might not need (say) 100 firefighters for the day to day work in a medium city any more... but you absolutely need 100 firefighters when the large chemical plant goes up in a blaze.
It's hard enough in Germany to balance that, but we at least can draw on the advantage of Germany being decently settled which means we can have support crews come in from neighboring cities. But in the US where it might be the case that the nearest city with enough staff is hours of driving away? By the time you get enough staff on site, the entire plant is gone.
That is not how the US looks/works. The large chemical plant is in a large city (or suburb) where they can call plenty of other nearby cities for help.
Most of the land in the US doesn't have enough population to support a large chemical plant. The plant needs not only the people who work in the plant. It also needs schools, grocery stores, libraries, doctors... And that many people also really want things like sports teams. A small chemical plant can locate in a rural areas, but not a large one.
i'm telling ya clip the fire department, if a car wreck happens you can just have a doorfash guy come put cones around and light the accident on fire, itll clear up in a couple hours boom i just saved taxpayers trillions of dollars in waste
