I really think Novine is arguing against a straw man here. There are no cities in the US anywhere near the size of Detroit that have a volunteer fire department. Detroit isn't going to have one either, and as far as I can see Davewindsor wasn't proposing that. What I thought he was suggesting is that Detroit could supplement its fire department with volunteers, which seems reasonable to me, as this is done in many cities, including large ones with challenging conditions like New York and Berlin.

If people think that would be a bad idea, they should argue against that, not against the idea of volunteer fire departments in general. I will make one argument, which is that while I think it might be a good idea in the abstract, in a context where professional firefighters are very likely to be laid off, it is easy to see how there could be some serious friction between the professionals and the volunteers--this is the sort of program that would be a lot easier to implement when people aren't worried about their jobs.