How do most fire depts operate?

Do most of the fire depts in RI hire fire/medics or ff/emt?

Neither. They hire EMT-Cs. You can be any level of FF you want, but you're going through their academy.

some require emt-basic to apply and others require emt-cardiac, my department requires neither...but most of them require you to get your emt-cardiac at some point usually they give you a year once your hired to get it. very few require firefighter certifications to be hired