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I'm not sure you'd actually save much money even if you could get by with EMTs. You still need a certain number of firemen on duty in case you actually have a

by tsotha 11y ago

I'm not sure you'd actually save much money even if you could get by with EMTs. You still need a certain number of firemen on duty in case you actually have a fire, and it's not like you don't have to pay firemen while they wait for one. Labor costs dwarf everything else for that kind of service.

netfire 11y ago
It would be interesting to see a cost breakdown of the police, EMT and fire department labor, transit and equipment costs too see the potential savings (or lack thereof). Given that the SFFD is only responding 1.5% of the time to fire-related incidents, you could probably reduce the number of fire department stations, trucks and employees considerably if they only responded to fire-related emergencies.