Before I get to the meat and potatoes of this blog I feel I should firs clarify a few things. The fire departments in this country are staffed by some of the hardest working most highly skilled professionals I’ve had the pleasure of working with.They risk their lives everyday, and put others before themselves without a second thought.If I could shake each of their hands and thank each of them personally for that I would. Their job is a very important one, and they are an essential piece of the Public Safety model in this country. Over the past 30 years, Fire Suppression and more importantly Fire Prevention has greatly improved nation wide.Fires are down almost everywhere you go.Fire inspection regulations and building codes have become more strict.Fire Fighters are better trained and better prepared to do their jobs than they ever have been.They have achieved their desired result: less fires.Now, with less fires, the question that comes up is “what do we do with all of these fire fighters?”You now have all of these municipal employees doing so much less work at higher wages than they’ve been paid in the past.The result: find more work for them or lay them off. None of this should be viewed as the Fire Departments’ fault.The blame should be placed (dare I say) on our local and state Politicians who stare at spread sheets all day and worry about the all mighty dollar.Lets face it, if Fire Prevention wasn’t what it is, and Crime was instead exponentially down, Ambulances would be driving around with the words “Police Department” on the side of them.The Cash Cow that is the ambulance business would be moved to which ever department was in the bigger budget crisis. Getting back to the problem at hand though, the answer to budget shortfalls has been simple for many departments: Respond to Medical Calls, either in a first response capacity or take over the ambulance.Lets face it, Ambulance runs mean volume and money.Money means jobs.Its a no brainer, right? Wrong.The result in some of our largest cities has been to put a band aid on a sucking chest wound.Take a look at these examples...