Maybe time to pack it in

Have had a very frustrating couple of weeks,  had a garage and house fire that we only turned one more than half the department for.  Not sure where the rest of the people were, but we were really short handed for a while.  Than we had a couple of minor calls, again almost no one showed.  The top of the cake so to speak was an activated fire alarm on the lake shore that show only four guys answer.  I drove the tanker alone.  Got just the mini and the tanker out on the call.  Our lack of response to these a long with a four person response on a major accident on the freeway has got me thinking along several lines.  One, we may need to have mutual aid respond to all our calls until we get more available people.  This would be a major change and one I am not sure would be well received by almost no one.  My first responsibility is to the residents, and if that is the only way to insure an adequate response, then that is what we need to do, regardless of the embarrassment it causes us as a department.  I have asked repeatedly for ideas to improve this from my officers and so far have gotten the same number as I have lifetime home runs,  Zero.  At this point it is not feasible to have a paid crew on during the day because of lack of call volume and cost.  Today we had a call and I was about half way between the call and the station.  Went back to the station, and responded with a truck and two other firefighters.  If it had been last week Wednesday, 2/3 of that crew would have not be available.  If it had been ten minutes later today, I would have been first on scene, but we would have had not truck for a while.  Don't know what to do about it.  It is causing a loss of sleep, I am short tempered with people, and have to bite my lip to keep from cutting loose on a few of them.   I came home this evening after having dinner with some high school friends, and made a mental list of what I wouldn't have to do if I quit the fire department.   It would free up three nights a month, no more planning things around meetings.  No more county officer's meeting, which by in large are a waste of time, so much talk so little action.  I would have two nights a week free because I wouldn't be teaching in the academy this fall and winter.  It would give me about three hours on Saturday and a couple of Sunday afternoon to do other things rather than sit and fill out grant applications, insurance review papers, budget planning and where to move money to funds that are over budget, and all sorts of other things that no one ever told me about.   I have reached the point that some of these things are just going to no get done, or on second thought I will hand them to my deputy chief and let him do them, than again if he handles them like he has handled the SOP for vehicle extraction and the station cleaning  assignment, they will never get done.   Right now, I think I should go to bed as my level of burn is slowly raising   Night all.