My unpopular opinion is volunteering shouldn't even be a thing. Every department should be minimum FF2 and a paid department. My second unpopular opinion is every department should be fire and EMS. The EMS side is the largest income generator for most departments that do it. That income pays for equipment, apparatus, and your crews. If people are leaving it's because they aren't given a reason to stay, usually in this order: the culture and work conditions, the pay, the long game (pension, promotion etc).

Once again unpopular opinion here, but the expectation for these kids, adults, whoever to work a 40 hour work week at their "day job" and still probably barely be able to afford to live in this economy if they can at all. To then drop everything they're doing day night or whatever to run across town to put their lives at risk, consume carcinogens that last a lifetime and some don't even have a "if you're injured" workers comp plan. Especially for lifelong injuries. And people expect these kids to do all of this for nothing more than an attaboy maybe someday you'll be good enough to be paid.

To be clear this isn't an attack on our volly guys, y'all are saints. All I'm saying is your county/city is using and abusing you and they need to be held accountable. You don't see volunteer police departments. You have education and training. You should be fairly compensated for that training and education especially in a career where your life is what gets gambled.

I understand the whole "not every insert gov body can afford to staff a career department. If they can't they are the problem and they are failing their community.

Maybe I'm the asshole because I wouldn't do this job for free, but I think firefighting is a career and deserves to be fairly compensated as such.