Career Firefighter

When people hear that I am a firefighter there are many questions that follow. The most common question I get is; do you work at the fire station close to your house. Another question many people ask is; do you have to stay there the entire time. I feel the reason people ask this is because they do not know the difference between a career firefighter & a volunteer firefighter. A person could be a mix of both types. I am going to help you understand the major differences between these types of firefighters.
According to Firehouse.com, a career firefighter is a person whose primary job is as a firefighter working full-time for a fire department from 40 to 72 hours a week. In the city where I am a career firefighter, the city has pledged
This is very common in the county in which I live. A volunteer fire department is not staffed 24 hours a day 365 days a year. Most volunteer fire departments do not have anyone at them during the day. Volunteer firefighters are issued pagers that will alert when there is a call for service. If there is a call for service, the volunteer’s pager will alert and the volunteer will choose to go on the call for service or not. Many career firefighters are also volunteer firefighters, so on their day off they will respond to the calls for service. Since, there is no one manning the fire department, a volunteer would have to go to the department to get an apparatus to respond to the call for service. The volunteer fire departments receive tax money from the county to operate, and the county receives the tax money from county residents when they pay their property taxes. A true, strictly volunteer firefighter does not receive any compensation whatsoever for doing the volunteer work that he/she does. A volunteer firefighter must get adequate training, which they are not compensated for, in order to properly fight fire and help the community in which they