Fire departments rarely fight fires anymore, but you wouldn’t know it the way department salaries are soaring.

Mostly, firefighters respond to run-of-the-mill medical emergencies in fancy million-dollar trucks. Governing magazine lays out the change over time:

In 1980, according to the National Fire Protection Association, the nation’s 30,000 fire departments responded to 10.8 million emergency calls. About 3 million were classified as fires. By 2013, total calls had nearly tripled to 31.6 million, while fire calls had plummeted to 1.24 million, of which just 500,000 of were actual structure fires. For America’s 1.14 million career and volunteer firefighters, that works out to an average of just one structure fire every other year.

More at mises.org. 

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