If you're cool with scrapping 80%-ish of a country's firefighters, you should take a moment and think about redundancy; Simply having "enough" firefighters for most common situation's simply not gonna cut it.
Also, they're not only putting out fires, but also key in helping with floods, breaking people out of cars, supplying (basic) medical care, and other small incidents à la "cat on a tree".
TL;DR: Reducing the number of firefighters is most likely a dumb idea, and should be one of the last points on your list.