Why do fire departments want to take over paramedic and ambulance services?
Money. These are tough economic times and local governments are being forced to reduce spending. Today’s firefighters spend less than 15 percent of their time fighting fires. They realize they have to find something to do with their time to justify their staffing levels and budgets. Frankly, they’re scared that the government is ultimately going to have to reduce their size. It’s really interesting the opinion of most business people is that jobs are incidental to the business of government. What they are really doing in this case is trying to justify their existence by finding more for firefighters to do. If you look at the way private business operates, you’ll find that when a business has a decline in the demand for a service or product, generally it looks at ways to reduce expenses and payroll to operate more economically. But what the fire department is doing is just the opposite. They want to increase their department’s budget and payroll and create more functions for their under
