Their are a plethora of problems being an EMT-B...I know because I was one for two years (then an EMT-Intermediate and now NREMT-P). The first is that you really aren't trained to do that much as an EMT-B despite the fact that most are extremely excited about driving with lights-and-siren and pushing drugs--this does not happen anywhere near any metropolitan areas. I went to college in Maine and had the fortune of working with a service where there was a medic and emt on each truck and so I did emergency runs.
The moral is that basic emt's aren't trained in anything beyond very basic life support measures. EMTs, by and large, are used for patient transport. This is where you take patients from nursing home -> hospital, vice-versa, or nursing home to nursing home. Its extremely tedious, poorly paying and the burnout rate is really high. But there's such an influx of basic EMTs that the demand for such jobs is high. Then, one of two things happens...1) they leave the field or 2) they get their paramedic. At this point, you are trained for so much more.
BUT...you still usually can't do 911 in major cities because usually this is the property of the fire departments that NEED ems runs in order to justify their personnel levels--85% of current day fire dept. responses are NOT to anything fire related---they're EMS runs, responses to car accidents, and the like. Some cities, like NYC have private ambulance companies take some of the 911 load because of the extremely high call volume. And some cities (e.g. Boston, Newark) keep their EMS systems completely separate from the FD. New York and DC are largely FD run--the problem then is integrating medics and firefighters...LA, SF and some other major cities have rectified this problem by having all emts/paramedics become firefighters as well, thus eliminating the gap. However, in DC and NYC, this has not been done and as such, the two groups, although they work together do not always get along very well.
I hope this helps--feel free to ask any other questions you have about EMS.
Ultimately, its really hard to do anything exciting with an EMT basic license--with good reason--its only about 200 hours training--you shouldn't be pushing drugs, defibrillating and the like...
If you want to work in the ED then you'll probably have to do something not involving patient care or maybe you'll get 'lucky' and be allowed to do triage, but its really hard to do that as an EMT basic. You might best be served by travelling outside of DC to some small suburb with a volunteer ambulance service and starting there...
