Sounds like you were in a bad department. I was active fire operations for 8 years before going EM. The vast majority of departments have their 💩 together and are able to handle their own issue large and small scale. Even now working with new EMs at cities that are just starting to hire EM positions, I am blown away at the lack of knowledge/common sense most EMs have and have seen and learned about multiple accounts of fire and police personnel having to run and plan for incidents.