So I just got my first gas station fire.
I should have made sure I had the academy built and personnel trained before setting the gas station POI, but at least I had a Haz Mat unit in the station, all the good that does me since no one is qualified.
So that gas station is going to continue to burn for a hella long time while I earn enough credits to build the academy and send my people off for training. I removed my gas station POIs so my call queue doesn't clog up with a bunch of unsolvable gas station fires.
In real life, any agency that gets a call it isn't equipped to deal with and that doesn't have access to required resources, well..... all emergencies stabilize eventually. If you send just one engine to a high rise fire in real life, yeah, they can't really do anything, but the fire will eventually run out of fuel and go out, or the building will collapse. The fire may spread. But eventually.... EVENTUALLY..... the situation WILL stabilize, even with just one engine, even if it takes days/weeks/months and the whole city burns down. EVENTUALLY, it stabilizes.
In game, having a perpetual fire makes no sense. Incidents in game without the right resources do count down anyway, to a point, but then they lock up. I propose that the countdown be allowed to continue - at an excruciating pace, say at 1/10,000 of normal speed - but that they not just burn forever until you get your troops back from fire school. That high rise isn't going to wait for your troops to get trained, it will collapse and go out first, lol.