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Notes -
My volunteer fire department is currently not accepting more people to their wait list!
There's many small reasons for that, among them: people think it's cool, it's fun training/working with heavy machinery, they party extremely hard, among the best local networks/old boys clubs available, looks good on CV.
There's also more material incentives, like they pay for your trucking licence (so you can operate the heavy fire trucks), power boat licence and things like first-responder medical licences - but in the end, nobody quits after getting those perks.
Aren't they on call?
No, not all of them, not all the time.
Each local fire department has a big, public summer party here, for fundraising and to say thank you to the volunteers. Those parties are never at the same weekend, and all firefighters visit each other's parties.
Also, after big exercises, sometimes a wild keg appears...
Still, everybody jokes that you could burn all the fire departments down to the ground as long as there's a summer party somewhere in a 50 mile radius. It's probably true.
Years ago, a fire broke out in the next town over during their annual festival. Their own volunteer firefighters didn’t even leave the bar, even though it was directly across the street from the station. Instead, the fire departments from two neighboring towns showed up to douse the blaze.
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