Laquisha12 I apologize for the late reply. It looks like your post was moved to this forum after the fact and buried under newer posts before I ever saw it.
At any rate, what you've described sounds like two separate known issues. The world of Isla Paradiso is so broken out of the box that it's almost unplayable, but it can be fixed if you're interested. Or you can use its features in other worlds. These features are generally fine, with the only limitation being that some worlds don't have deep-enough water for scuba diving or navigating boats.
The firefighter career in Ambitions has been a little broken for a while, with the main issue being that fires appear to have been put out (or they simply vanish) before you get get to them. The workaround is to send your sim near the lot with the fire, for example on the sidewalk outside, and only then onto the lot itself, and then to break down the door or whatever is necessary.
I'm not sure what else is going on with the career though. I don't remember the other sims ever helping out with the fires, and I think the descriptions I read at the time (2010) said the NPC firefighters were useless as well. Did you perhaps have multiple active sims in the career? If so, perhaps you sent them all as a team? I admit I didn't buy the pack on release, but I did soon after, and I played this career on whatever the Ambitions patch level was for a while.
