Have you looked at your kids lately? How about your wife? How many mirrors does it take for you to get a full view of yourself. Seen your feet lately (not to mention other things...)? It is a fact that the WFD and the volunteers are very well trained in the areas of fire fighting, fire prevention, Haz-Mat response/remediation and accident EMT/ERT response. This training involves actual sceanarios as well as considerable classroom time. If obesity restricted any of the EMT/ERT daily activites, they would not be allowed to work. Physical requirements are a necessity and they must prove themselves regularly to remain active and functional. It behooves me as to why people get so far off track as to what this article is really about and then try to act as an "Armchair Expert" on issues they know nothing about. I encourage you to go through the qualification process just to BEGIN training as a firefighter EMT/ERT. I believe you would be very lucky to get through the 1st session of classroom time before you give up.