Actually, the dems and the IAFF have been trying for decades to get VFDs reclassified as State Fire Departments (like state police). Therefore, the state would have to pay the firefighters and thus would have to be unionized under the IAFF doctrine depending on their state's collective bargaining agreement.
Well, that would make for some interesting scheduling. In the little town where I grew up, there would only be maybe one or two guys at the firehouse. When a call came in, they'd turn on a siren that could be heard for miles.
The volunteers, most of whom were young guys with hotrods, would drop what they were doing, turn on the flashers they put on their cars, and go screaming through town a hundred miles an hour to the firehouse, so they could jump on the fire engine.
They eventually got radios, so they could head for the fire instead of the firehouse, but regardless, that siren would set a half-dozen hotrods flying through town like rockets.
Those firemen were a lot more dangerous than any of the little grass fires and kitchen grease fires they put out.
But they always had the best equipment, because every time they put a levy on the ballot it would pass in a landslide. Had there ever been a real fire, I would have every bit as much faith in them as any paid department.
