... A fisherman is free to choose to go out in a storm or fish in dangerous waters, and a logger can choose to cut a difficult tree or pass it by - just to name a few factors that make their professions dangerous.
... a policeman cannot choose which confrontations to avoid because they are too dangerous, and most certainly a firefighter cannot choose which burning buildings to enter in search of trapped civilians.
I would think that a significant part of the dangers in fishing and logging are not just poor decisions that could have been easily avoided, those jobs are inherently dangerous. And I suppose
some of the dangers in firefighting and police work are due to poor decisions.
I knew a bunch of old farmers, and there were quite a few fingers and limbs missing, a friend of mine lost an eye when a hay mower threw up a stone. They were doing their job, with dangerous machinery. It's part of farming, powerful tractors, machines that cut stuff in fields - you can't put safety guards on everything in nature, you can't remove every stone in a 400 acre field. Some of them maybe were avoidable, I don't know, but I know some weren't. If you are bringing in hay bales, you use a hay-hook. It's got to be sharp. The tractor hits a bump, you fall off, and the hay hook ends up in your thigh, miles out in a field, and your tractor goes about 5 miles an hour - your only path to help. Fields have bumps and stones, hay hooks are sharp - if the farmer decides not to bring in the hay, after it's been cut and a rain is approaching (which will cause it all to rot and be useless), he's not going to be a farmer for long. You can't just choose not to confront the danger in that job, it's part of the job too.
True, police or firefighters can't pick and choose the confrontation, but they did choose the career. Some of them thrive on the danger - they'd rather die than be a cube rat for 40 years. But a bunch of cube rats designed the firetruck, the two-way radios that help keep them safe, some assembly line worker put those together, or sewed their fire-resistant uniform or bullet-proof vest. Farmers feed them.
Just as I appreciate that there are firefighters and police that will do a very tough job many of us wouldn't or couldn't do, they should appreciate there are cube rats and others to support them. Does everyone deserve some huge benefit program, because we are all important in our own ways?
-ERD50
