I can't say I disagree with you. Unfortunately that is not reality in the vast majority of our country. So you might not want to venture to far out of CA. :-) And if you do, stick to the bigger cities.
From wiki: (take it for what it is). As of 2014, there are around 1,134,400 firefighters serving in 27,198[1] fire departments nationwide and responding to emergencies from 58,150 fire stations. Of those firefighters, 31% or 346,150 were career firefighters and 69% or 788,250 were volunteers.[2]
Keep in mind that career firefighters are concentrated in high population area. Career firefighters represent 15% of all departments but protect approximately two thirds of the U.S. population. Meanwhile, 85% of fire departments are volunteer or mostly volunteer and protect approximately one third of the population.
If you are interested, you might find this link interesting: https://apps.usfa.fema.gov/registry/summary
You should note that even in California, more then half of your fire departments are considered as mostly or 100% volunteer. My statement earlier was incorrect. But I suspect, that as in the rest of the country, the majority of your population are in the metro areas and mostly covered by paid departments.
The number of volunteers are however, drastically dropping. There was something in the area of 1.5 million volunteers just like 10-15 yrs ago.