Honestly, being a (voluntary) firefighter is 90% exercises, 5% special training (learning new tech etc.), and <= 5% actually being in action. For our region, ‘action’ means 40% false alarms from the system at a hospital, 20% false alarm of someone being in the river near us (there never is anyone), and 30% other alarms. From the 10% of other action, most times we search for someone or clean up oil, pump out basement etc. In 2 years we had 5 fires, 3 of those were arson and basically a one-time thing. And of all of those, no human was ever in risk, except my sanity when being woken at 4 am before an exam.
Honestly, being a (voluntary) firefighter is 90% exercises, 5% special training (learning new tech etc.), and <= 5% actually being in action. For our region, ‘action’ means 40% false alarms from the system at a hospital, 20% false alarm of someone being in the river near us (there never is anyone), and 30% other alarms. From the 10% of other action, most times we search for someone or clean up oil, pump out basement etc. In 2 years we had 5 fires, 3 of those were arson and basically a one-time thing. And of all of those, no human was ever in risk, except my sanity when being woken at 4 am before an exam.