Proper use of a Fire Truck

[niceguyeddie]

Have over lapping shifts. Last hour of a shift go shopping to replace food eaten from the station. Now there's no issue of personal shopping in the event of an emergency, not fire truck wasting fuel to do it and a full crew ready and waiting to save granny.

Good idea. But I don't think they should be on the clock while running personal errands. Do you have any idea how many retired people are out there that have nothing to do all day? Some of them would love to pick stuff up for these guys and get to hang around the station.

How can you compare firefighting to a trade or 9-5 job? Part of your taxes that pay the salaries for firemen go towards guaranteeing you that you will have a BLS/ALS unit in a given time (read that as minutes). It's different county to county city to city. So let's say fireman are at the store and they get a call for a burning building, victim having a heart attack, traffic accident with multiple victims etc. They are required to drop whatever they are doing and respond and be there in the timeframe required by the county/city whatever.

When was the last time a carpenter/tradesman/accountant etc was asked the same? That is drop everything they are doing to rush to someone's aid. Granted that is the job description so firemen knew that before they showed up to work. But to compare that line of work to other 8 hour jobs isn't quite fair. Why would you want the service you pay for to even think of risking you the taxpayers response time/ quality of care for a few gallons of fuel?

I can guarantee when you're in a serious emergency you don't think twice about calling them for help. And I can bet you want them at scene ASAP and you don't want them to waste a second getting to you.

As far as getting paid to wash their truck, I can't believe your mad that the guys with the 300k+ truck are taking pride in the vehicle and taking care of it. So while they are not responding to calls they are taking care of their vehicle.... Seems like a fair deal.

Using fear to gain support. Sure, that's what our politicians do. The old "what if?". Well what if we found a better solution to save tax payer money. once again, why not use volunteers and interns to run errands and wash the truck?