Australia ‘better prepared’ for bushfires than ahead of black summer as government considers national community service
stopthatgirl7@kbin.social to 
theguardian.com
Emergency services minister says service would likely be voluntary as government ‘wouldn’t want to commit to obliging people or forcing them’
You are viewing a single comment
Yeah, I'm a volunteer firefighter in Catalonia, we only really do maintenance work or fill up gopher roles and damping down in the event of a serious fire ... proper firefighting is in no way fun, people need to be paid for it (and you can't just drag anyone in off the street to do it, lots of my fellow volunteers can't hold a hose for long and would panic in an emergency ... that's not a criticism, it's just how people are)
Oh of course. Yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about, it seems like such a difficult and dynamic job it seems absurd for any governing body to essentially depend on volunteers to perform any essential part of that job.
Thank you very much for doing way more than your part, and especially at this point where every year there's more wildfires than there ever have been before in larger wildfires than there ever have been, governments better take the hint and start paying people.
Yeah, the firefighters here are well supplied, it's amazing that places like Canada and Australia don't have this sorted out already ... and don't get me started on the lack of upkeep of electricity infrastructure causing fires in the US!