NJ - fire company vs fire district

https://whippanyfire.com/fire-company-vs-fire-district/

allow me to translate

fire company - soccer hooligans who ride on red trucks

fire district - soccer hooligans who wear shirt and tie - and SET A TAX RATE

=================

more seriously

fire company - a group of people who fight fires

fire district - a legal governmental entity that collects taxes to
provide fire protection to a community

therefore - you might have s situation where a fire district funds a
fire company - or you might have a fire district that runs its own FD
directly

or you might have a fire company that funds itself via donations or
fundraising (like running an event hall) - or you might have a fire
company that is funded by a mixture of tax money and bingo money and
donations and hall rental or chicken fries or pancake breakfasts etc

in recent years - when paid guys are hired to staff a fire station -
sometimes they will be considered to be government employees - and
they might work just weekdays - so they are essentially an independent
part time FD - Virginia is big on this arrangement

NJ is big on part time ambulance departments - with many communities
now having paid private ambulances on weekdays - and volunteers at
other times - so NJ ends up having lots and lots of ambulances -
because they dont share ambulances - and the volunteers probably dont
let the private ambulance companies use the volunteer ambulance
stations