Yesterday, in the main square of my city, there were the local firefighter (in Italy we call them "Vigili del fuoco") to show to the citizen their activities and their equipment.
There were many children around the big red truck and around the firemen who were showing how they use their equipment to save people from disaster like an earthquake or others. The children were really fascinated from the scenes and every child here want to be a fireman (or a soccer players, but this is another story ^_^)!
I have so much respect for the firemen, they work really hard to save lives after disaster, they fight and extinguish the dangerous fire, they help people after a car accidents and they work to solve other emergencies. I have one of my friend that he's a fireman from 10 years and so I know that the training to be a firefighter is really hard because they have to be ready for every emergencies. Here in Italy we have some high professional firemen and some volunteer (for the big emergenccies) who have the right skills to do it. They are also very close to the citizens thanks some events that they organize to help people to understand the importance of prevention.
The training that they do during their career may be different, because some of them can specialize themselves in different activities like, for example, climbers to save people in difficulty on the high mountains or sub to save people in the sea.
Maybe you don't know this, but here in Italy (some years ago) there was a nice cartoon called "Grisù", where a little dragon wanted to be a fireman ^_^
See ya later
Silvia