How do these volunteers get to their station, suited, and on the way in time for an emergency? Seems to me that a fire crew would be at work in different parts of the city and could take precious time to get equipped and on the way.
There are volunteer crews here in Canada, but they are almost exclusively for smaller towns less than 10k. Not much distance to travel to their station, however a house on my street burned pretty much to the ground waiting for the volunteer crew to arrive.
While most paid firefighters have to be out the door in 60 seconds, voluntary firefighters usually have 10 minutes to do the same. That's a trade-off that has to be made since not every small town can pay for a fully manned 24/7 fire station, especially when there are maybe 10 alarms per month. Some don't even average 1 alarm per month.
The trick to compensate for that is volume. As many stations as possible with only a few vehicles (mostly a single very large truck with 2000 litres of water), so ways are short. Only when something bigger happens, multiple stations will be alerted. Some stations also specialize by having a ladder truck, a hazmat truck, etc.
Volunteers should not be 10 minutes or more away from the station when on call. They can also cross on red in their private vehicle when alerted.
When a house is on fire badly enough to require the fire brigade, it's probably a write-off anyway. Even if the fire is put out promptly, the smoke and water damage will mean every room will need full remodelling, and the roof probably needs replacing. At that point, the cost isn't so different to just knocking it down and building again.
The main benefit the fire brigade offers is the ability to prevent spread to other buildings, and assist people escaping.
If the crew is so late to the scene that the house has essentially burned down:
1) Anyone trapped may end up dying or being severely injured
2) Fire spreads to neighbours (in the case I described the owners and neighbours were hosing down the next door house at their own risk.
Where I lived in Germany (city of ~300k) the next paid fire brigade was a ways off from our suburb. However, as it was explained to me, house building permits aren't issued if the next paid fire station is too far away (dunno what the time limit is) and volunteer forces don't count into that radius. However we had a volunteer fire brigade right smack middle of town (this isn't the sort of planned American suburb, this was a regular town founded around the year 1100 and the larger city grew into/around it). 3 fire trucks for ~6k inhabitants. 2 minute drive to us. Closest regular fire brigade would have been about a 7 minute drive but part of a rural town 'next door', closest actual city fire station ~15 minutes.
Where I live now in Canada (town of ~20k and growing) it's mainly a volunteer force. We have 6 fire engines + paramedic. There are IIRC a couple of paid firefighters always in the station just in case and the rest are volunteers that are at max allowed to live/work about a 10 minute (IIRC) drive from the station. Been a while since the open house visit. Next town over with a paid fire brigade is about a 12 minute drive from here while the local fire station is a 2 minute drive (without sirens blazing :)) I think they have a good chance of being faster or on par.
On the other hand, that 300k town had its own paramedic services helicopter. Had to unfortunately "make use" of that once. Awesome experience (apart from the medical emergency part). But if you have a medical emergency going on and you start hearing that chopper way before you hear sirens, it's just awesome!
Where I live now (in a millions of people metro area, there is no medical helicopter service whatsoever and traffic is really really bad.
There are volunteer crews here in Canada, but they are almost exclusively for smaller towns less than 10k. Not much distance to travel to their station, however a house on my street burned pretty much to the ground waiting for the volunteer crew to arrive.