irisheyes

Quote: The thing is, 'throwing themselves into a burning building' is becoming, for firefighters, what getting into a gunfight is for cops, something most never experience in their entire careers. First of all, Ottawa Fire Services responded to 26,370 incidents (fire, medical, rescue, public hazard and other) in 2011 including more than 3,421 fire calls. Do the math Scotty ..( I'll do it for you as you clearly did not research any numbers or facts before posting this). That's an average of 9.3 fires a DAY!!! I guess you could say that a lot of those fires are not major fires..and contained fairly quickly....but that is because of the amazing response times fire fighters provide this city. Stopping small fires from turning into major ones. With today's light weight construction and cookie cutter homes the dangers of these fires are more then ever. Stopping them saves lives and the city millions and millions of dollars in property damage. You talk about pension and health benefits...do you know that because fire fighters are exposed to hazardous materials, toxic fumes and off gasing of burning toxic materials and chemicals their chance of developing Cancer is proven to be twice as high if not more in certain Cancer types then that of a regular citizen? So what...we demand they rescue our families in a burning house... stabalize your brothers neck in an over turned vehicle while extracting him safely and swiftly so he keeps his ability to walk.... ignores the bodily fluids he's kneeling in while providing CPR to your grandma at 4 am in the morning. Pulling bodies from the water...performing ice rescues...hooking up ropes systems with enough smarts to calculate the mechanical advantage needed to pull whatever the task may be to safety...make life and death decissions of who gets treated and who doesnt in mass casualty situations ....imagine you are one of the 4 firefighters that showed up first to the bus/train incident...your scene...yours to manage and control...body parts everywhere.......and you wanna cut their health benefits and pensions??!! ( by the way only the Captain ( 25 plus years of duty usually) of that truck that controls the entire scene makes 100k if lucky. The rest of the guys vary from 48 to 85k depending on time in. Cops deal with on a daily basis the low of the low. muderers, gangbangers, bikers, drug dealers, rapists, prostitutes, needles, knives, guns, and not to mention the pissed off crack head that spits in your face only to find out they have Hep C......so when you are not looking for " blondes, brunettes, redheads, money and yachts as your profile says you are into...you are walking a mile in these guys' shoes right...saving the day?? i think not You wanna bring up military, lets go there too. All overseas deployments are ranked on where you go, what level of threat there is in that region and 'hardship' allowance. These are all on top of regular pay. To boot, a soldier is not taxed on his earnings. So lets be clear. A Col overseas is making 9 -11 K tax free a month!! While he sits in a TOC and supervises the grunts doing the dirty work. If you are gonna compare jobs, compare them fairly. Every penny is deserved and earned by our CF. You say no special training or skills required....first of all....over 5000 people on avg write the fire test. Of those, 600 fall within the test scores needed for a first interview...then a second if they are lucky. From that, the best of the best are selected....if you think showing up with no education, life experience, or skill set that makes you competetive is gonna get you on...well you have another thing coming. Why do so many people show up? The honour to serve ones community while earning a salary to comfortably live in the very community he/she protects isnt such a hard thing to wrap ones head around. And why not give it to them!! Their jobs make the rest of us safer. Our insurance lower. Our houses safer. Our streets safer. And when something bad happens...they run towards the problem...not away. Do they get a dividend check at the end of the year with a percentage of property value saved? Drugs value off the streets? etc etc No...so ask yourself what do you give back? Services provided by the OFS include: Fire Suppression Services (including fire rescue, tiered medical response, training, communications and incident management); Special Operations (including Water/Ice Rescue services, Auto Extrication, Confined Space, Trench, Collapse and High Angle Rescue; Hazardous Materials responses; Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and Explosive Response); Urban Search and Rescue activities and Fire Prevention and Public Fire Safety Education (including fire prevention inspections, determination of cause and origin of fires, attendance at public education events and dissemination of public fire safety educational materials)....when you get home...what can you say you did at work today to be so deserving of what bread you brought home? Stay safe!