In 2020, our firefighters here in Toronto are bored. They go to car accident scenes to simply block traffic, they show up at 911 calls to talk with people and see if they can offer aid while waiting for paramedics/ambulance, two or three trucks will show up for our small walkups occasional false alarms. My brother and nephew are cops, they end up shooing the fire trucks away from minor accidents because they clog up traffic with their trucks and multiple firefighters just hanging around.

The reasons for this boredom are fantastic news: smoke detectors, safer vehicles, mandatory sprinklers even in small complexes, mandatory fire escapes, laws around flamability of furniture/clothing/bedding, reduced smoking, better awareness of fire hazards.

Yes, these tragedies still happen, but don't make it sound like we're not doing anything because right now one of our biggest issues is too many fireman for the drastically reduced number of vehicle and house fires we have: we paid for all of these safety programs and we still pay for the fireman they should have replaced.