Our fire department is a lot volunteer and some paid. Here's the link to the history
http://www.valleycityfire.com/siteco...x/page/History It's actually pretty interesting
I had a friend who was a volunteer. He lived about a mile away and when on call he just hung out at home.
We do have an ongoing joke that if your house ever catches on fire you better grab the marshmallows on the way out
We have a city about 5 miles away that has a full fire department. It's not ideal but if we had to we could always use them too.