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by M95D 320 days ago
> They have precognition and can see into the future and know that a house fire is going to start while they're out at a non-fire call in your country?

Do heart attacks and car accidents usually include fires in your country? I could only find statistics for Finland [1]. It seems that fires are so rare they're put in the "rescue and other authorities" category which has a total of 5% of calls requiring intervention.

In my country I know of only 2 or 3 cases of cars that caught fire in an accident in the last 10 years and they all caught fire immediately, not after ambulance arrived. They're so rare, it's a major news story every time. And I know of no heart attacks that were followed by a fire. /s

Let's assume that somehow a fire starts after the initial crew gets there. I'm sure everyone is trained to: 1) call for the fire truck (that's separate crew, nobody has to go back and fetch it), 2) use the fire extinguisher from the van and 3) as most emergencies are in cities, use the building's fire hoses and extinguishers until 1) arrives.

> extra 20-45min wait is no problem in a life/safety critical situation

That's not what the statistics show. [2]

> Either way you are in a serious, serious bubble.

No, I don't belive I'm in a bubble. I still belive it's a very very big waste of money and resources to call a fire truck if there's no fire.

[1] https://112.fi/en/-/statistics-on-the-emergency-number-112 [2] https://wifitalents.com/emergency-response-time-statistics/

1 comments

I think the idea is that fire trucks dispatch for a heart attack, get there, and then get called in to fight a fire in another location.
It still doesn't make sense.

Fire/emergency stations are placed so they can get quickly anywhere in their assigned area. If they're at another call when a real fire starts, it's not statiscally probable to be closer than if they were at the base station. They could be delayed even more by the traffic jam caused by the car accident they're responding to.

So better send one of the vans to heart attacks and car accidents and keep the fire truck at the base stations for fires only.

You definitely seem to have a lot more background in the details and nuances of these systems than I do, sounds like you've got it figured out!