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Amazing take
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Wally Nowinski
@Nowooski
Replying to @AlecStapp
Calling it “firefighter” is how we get men to sign up for care work.
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They could be a deterrent! The fire could be scared to come around when there are so many firefighters!
Unsurprisingly, this is simply because we have fewer fires. This chart isn’t adjusted for population growth which has gone up by 50%+ since 1980
vehicle crashes should be added to the chart as well, and technical rescue calls.
Since smoking has dropped, so have house fires. But you still need firefighters, so they try to make themselves useful elsewhere, partly to stave off budget cuts I suspect.
Similar to how police officers deal with a lot of mental health issues that used to be handled by social workers.
Be careful in this analysis. We have made homes and businesses safer with alarms and fixed fire fighting systems, but the intensity and chemical reaction on fires have increased.
But if there’s a very big fire / disaster, you’d probably want your dept to be able to handle it, which means you’ll have excess manpower during the 99.9% of the time you’re not dealing with a disaster.
Most of the medical calls are obese people that fall over, are not able to get up and need special equipment. Happens way more than you'd think.
Having trained as an EMT in a class of mostly young men, I think merging fire & EMS was a mistake. Most of those guys want to be firefighters -- not medics -- & many are not temperamentally suited to the latter.
Fire department out in my neighborhood yesterday and one of the firefighters said it was 80% medical call outs.
When I asked why, he said because they have a much better response time than most ambulances.
It makes a compelling case for Ambulance services being a separately funded entity.
This is why I believe in volunteer fire fighters ran by a few professionals.
We also need to change the laws so that mobile medical care can do care on the street without taking every person to the hospital.
Firefighter here. This graph doesn't acknowledge the regionality involved in this line of work. Here in the northeast, we still burn frequently, especially in lower income areas. Start taking numbers on a national scale involving rural communities, and of course your graph looks
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Is responding to car accidents bundled under medical calls? It’s really the only time I ever see a fire truck anymore
is that necessarily to the bad
- calling it fire fighters emphasizes you MAY have to do the hardest part of the job at some sharp-point but then luckily now less often than before
- less fires means we're getting smarter about it
- if firefighters do the medical things then
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because hospitals and insurance won't pay enough to have adequate ambulance coverage
They are essentially benefiting from this tax payer funded service rather than having it be a fee for service that runs through insurance
My friend is a firefighter and says this is absolutely the case. Ppl aging in place, sick, disabled, the elderly, etc. It's very sad.
curious how that ratio changes in urban vs. rural
suspect medical calls % goes up dramatically
most US fire departments are volunteer, aka run by a couple families who have been doing it for generations
ambulance is main source of revenue to keep it going
municipalities don't want to raise property taxes
bonds can only be spent on buildings
operating costs go up
I wonder if inmates now fight more fires than firefighters.
In which case a job with some of the highest society cred has been outsourced to some of the lowest.
Been true for many years. Most fire engines have 4 firefighters which is one or two more than most need for the majority of calls.
Appalling. When are our politicians gonna stand up to the Big Fire Extinguisher Lobby ?! We demand more fires now !
Yes, firefighters are actually first responders and are second on scene, after police, for a medical call, followed by 3rd party paramedics in many cases. Generally, injury or elderly.
In an age of abundance, each residence might have an emergency room with tele-responder,
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How about you plot spending in the firefighting industry. We used to have volunteer firefighters in every city. Hell, I was one myself. What happened?
firemen fighting fires. You don’t see that much anymore.
Fire fighters are routine called to the Starbucks near me to fish out homeless people that lock themselves in the bathroom
Firefighters in Illinois are called so much to lift old people at assisted living that they are going to start charging “lift fees”. Retirement homes are fine with it, they will charge the residents and employees no longer have to lift (save on workers comp accidents).
They respond quickest to medical related calls. They're strategically placed in cities so that they can arrive on scene quickly. Paramedics is a toss up a lot of the time. Plus your local fire department wont bill you like paramedics/ambulance.
An olympic athlete spends over 99% of their time not competing in the olympics.
I couldn't be a volunteer at my local department because I didn't want to be an EMT too.
Look at people that have “affordable” medical insurance coverage, those that seek preventive medicine, and those that use ERs as their doctor during that time period. We pay the most for our care and the results don’t even deliver better quality of life.
They are usually the first on scene for most car accidents. They are trained EMTs too
I would love to see the same chart happen with police officers, where murders are equivalent to fires.
So one reason firefighters are so much faster responding to medical calls in rural areas is that the few ambulances have to drive a great distance to the hospital. Firefighters are always nearby.
Getting ambulances to cover rural areas is tough. The economics aren’t great.
they should train all nurses as firefighters, or all firefighters are nurses. perhaps also train them as police officers also. that way they can take care of all emergencies.
I talked to a fire fighter the other day. He just gets fat people up.
I know in a lot of areas - including most of the areas I've lived in - the only ambulances/ EMTs all seem to be integrated with the fire departments?
So if someone calls 911 for an ambulance, more often it is the fire dept that rolls out?
This is a problem.
As volunteer firefighter, one of the reasons I left was due to all the medical calls.
People eat carbs for a few decades then die in a mess of obese diabetes.
We go on a call which frequently included a dead body and huge pile of meds do be documented.
Yeah, safety measures leveled up for sure. Good thing too—nobody needs those surprises
I was landscaping for this really rich dude once. The local fire dept brought a truck and crew to his house and used their truck/ladder to shine the brass ball at the top of his flag pole.
I shit you not.
very disappointed firemen are not actually that helpful, getting the ick
Yes. Meanwhile the building and housing fire regulation codes keep getting stricter and stricter, forcing up costs well beyond any sensible cost benefit analysis.
Most EMTs unfortunately spend most of their time resuscitating fentanyl OD cases.
Firefighters want to give you a 5-minute ride to the hospital for $1500. They figured out that's pretty lucrative.
No. They have to justify their high pay and great benefits. Fires don't occur like they used to.
it seems sensible to me if you are going to staff a firehouse to give them things to do when there aren't fires. it also provides continuous training on getting out the door quickly, exercising the vehicles and so on
This is why SF is constant sirens. They are an absolute menace. Gotta BLAST those air horns to get ladders and hoses to the overdoses.
and yet they still want massive trucks for fighting every imaginable fire possible
Medical calls likely includes vehicle crashes, which have a Hazmat element that EMTs are not trained on.
Is it just less fires in general or a higher rate of medical emergencies?
They went where the money is, just like everything other successful entity in the healthcare system
Who cares they still fight the fires and they also do the work no one else is and manage not to randomly shoot innocent people like the cops do
Yet they haul around the biggest fire trucks/engines in the world, with all the fire fighting requipment and water reserves to respond to a medical call.
There is generally zero reason to send firefighters to accidents, unless, of course, something is on fire.
I’ve been saying fire departments are a boondoggle for years. When they aren’t washing their trucks or playing ping pong at the firehouse they unnecessarily send 2 trucks out to every fender bender where they stand around pointlessly all to justify their extravagant expense! Some
I don’t know it makes sense that the needle hasn’t moved aggressively in 40 years. And if anything this is a good sign. Less actual fires. Maybe we’re much safer than back then. Medical calls have always been at the top of the chart. We did add 118,000,000 people to thisShow more
It's really not that weird
Count on your hands how many fires you've seen
Count on your hands how many car accidents/medical emergencies you've seen
The overlap of EMT/Firefighter in the industry is insanely high
They’re simply responding to calls they wouldn’t have gone on 40 years ago. Good use of guys who would otherwise be getting paid to sit around the firehouse.
It’s mostly responding to old people and fat people who have fallen and can’t get up. The prior is inevitable and a worth-while service. The latter is completely preventable and a drag on taxpayers.
It’s maddening that in LA, fire trucks escort every ambulance to medical calls. And on top of it, LAFD paramedics often handoff the patient to a private contractor for hospital transport!
Why not just dispatch a paramedic that does it all and be done with it?
Average squad run:
Please respond to 420 shithole avenue for a 63 year old female complaining of stomachache pain.
On scene: you want to go to the hospital?
Patient: no
Ok, sign here….
Show us in service. Returning on a refusal.
In some parts of the US, firefighters are basically Narcan dispensers.
They do collect 7 figure pensions and retire in Florida at 45 though. Paid by American tax payers of course.