4 ms·
Volunteer firemen in the US certainly do get paid, or at least reimbursed. They're not working for free. And places with volunteer fire departments aren't volun
by freehunter 8y ago
Volunteer firemen in the US certainly do get paid, or at least reimbursed. They're not working for free. And places with volunteer fire departments aren't volunteer because there's no pride, they're volunteer because there aren't enough fires to warrant paying people full-time to sit around doing nothing. They're on-call, and they get paid to respond to fires. In the meantime, they go to their normal job that also pays them money.
- nkurz 8y agoI think you are overgeneralizing. In the two places I'm familiar with, rural North Carolina and rural Wisconsin, "volunteer firemen" are truly unpaid volunteers. You are right that others are paid for their time, but it's not universal. Here's a Straight Dope thread that talks about the different approaches in some different places: https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=658416 https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=658416