This made me laugh my drink through my nose -- and I've had my life saved by volunteer fire fighters in the PNW backcountry. A gifted, timely amateur beats an absent professional any day.

There are not enough professional firefighters in some places.

There are too many in others. They mostly do housecalls, serving as ambulances, since house fires are rare today.

Too many in cities but in rural areas, there are never enough. And they are never close enough. Lots of those places, the volunteers train once a month and carry a pager. They are all spread out over the county. When the page goes off, they leave work or home and go to the scene to be useful.

And the selection and training for volunteers is as rigorous as for the professionals, for the obvious reason that they can't permit life and property to be endangered just because someone's a volunteer.

I had a workshop fire once. Grabbing the fire extinguisher and quickly putting it out was defintely a better idea than outsourcing that task.