I personally think the western "fire department" model has to go.

A city where I used to live tried to cut the fire department budget, and the fire union went to war. They would just tweet all the time and do press releases about how the section of the city were a truck was cut was now undefended, and how the citizens were now in danger of burning alive in their homes.

The truth is there are less residential fires than ever before, and less people die from fires than ever before.

Modern building and fire codes are the reason for this, and yet fire department budgets get bigger over time, not smaller.

A common reason given by firefighters for the need to keep so many around is modern building contents, saying that they are most plastic and other synthetics, which is true. They burn much hotter and faster than interior contents of the past, which were wood and cotton and such, which all burns relatively slow.

So firefighting basically has two models, interior( offensive) and exterior (defensive). In an offensive operation, firefighters are actually entering the structure with hoses, and attempting to extinguish the fire at the source, this is the type of firefighting that is dangerous, and the kind that gets firefighters killed.

(actually what kills firefighters is #1 Heart attacks, and #2 Traffic accidents)

A defensive attack is everyone surrounds the building and spays water on it until it goes out, this prevents fire spread, but also the fire will burn much more of the building before this attack is effective, and almost always is a total loss of the building. This style of operation is much less dangerous, and requires way less people.

Most structure fires could be fought using a defensive method, its very rare that people are trapped inside burning buildings, and most often people who are trapped are dead long before then can be rescued.

Most structures that have a fire will be fully demolished anyways, so there is really no point in risking lives trying to save them, since the smoke and structural damage is too far gone.

Interior attacks do have a place, but usually when people are trapped, or when the fire is in the incipient stages and can be extinguished with a small amount of water.

Anyways I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you live in Medium Sized City, USA, your fire department is probably fighting way less fires than you think, and the ones they do fight they are fighting them in manner that is much more dangerous than needed, with more people than is required. Very outdated tactics, from 50 years ago.

For further reading see

An modern example of fire codes (or lack there of) leading to the death of a fuck ton of people.

Oakland Ghost Ship fire of 2016.

A modern example of fire departments getting people killed by sending firefighters into a building that was already most for no reason

This was a refrigerated warehouse fire, meaning the walls were heavily insulated and no heat could escape, the interior temperatures exceeded 3000 degrees and killed every firefighter that went in. And the chief just kept sending crews inside to die There was no reason to enter the building as there were no occupants and it was already fully involved.

So what do firefighters actually do, if they aren't going to fires?

The answer is they are going to medical calls and doing a shit job. Over 90% of calls fire departments go to are medical calls which should be attended by an ambulance and an ambulance only. Now if you were to say something stupid like 'well they should go to medical calls because they often arrive sooner than the ambulance", you would be correct, but this is only a sign that there are way too many fire stations and the ambulance service is so underfunded.

In summary, firefighting in USA is dumb, should be modernized. Fire department budgets should be cut and the money given to ambulance.

(Nothing I said applies to wildland firefighting, or industrial firefighting, or firefighting in a dense urban city like NY)