National Fire Incident Reporting System

The National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS) is a reporting standard that fire departments use to uniformly report on the full range of their activities, from fire to Emergency Medical Services (EMS) to severe weather and natural disasters.

Support and documentation: Reference guides, software and design documentation manuals, specification changes, National Fire Academy training courses, NFIRSGrams, and help with coding NFIRS incident reports.
Reporting guidelines: Instructions for state program managers and fire departments on how to report and release NFIRS data.
NFIRS applications, user login and registration: Login access, registration information and user tools for state program managers and fire departments.
Vendor information: New vendor registration, validation tools and software development procedures. Also included are the lists of active and registered vendors.
About NFIRS: The benefits of using NFIRS, how it works and the kinds of data collected.

CAD systems and autopopulated fields

This NFIRSGram explains how to ensure that your Computer-Assisted/Aided Dispatch (CAD) system is populating the correct data to the Incident Time and Incident Remarks/Narrative fields in NFIRS.

NFIRS state fire loss profiles

This page presents a snapshot of fire losses by state reported through NFIRS in 2017. Also included is information about fire departments and firefighter and home fire fatalities in 2020.

West Virginia

show all incident types + hide incident types -

Emergency Medical Services (EMS) rescue	51.2%
Good intent	16.7%
Service calls	8.7%
Fires	8.4%
False alarms	7.7%
Hazards	6.1%
Weather	0.5%
Other	0.3%
Explosions	0.3%

Chart/table total does not total 100 percent due to rounding.

Webinar: Fire Data in a Serious State

Presenter: Sara Wood, NFIRS Program Manager, Office of the Kansas State Fire Marshal. Air date: 2016

This presentation focuses on applications of NFIRS and other fire data beyond standards of accreditation, writing reports and grant qualification. The application of data-driven decisions can improve resources, call loads, educational messages and much more. Here’s what you will learn:

Easy strategies for improving fire data quality and culture in your department.
Available resources for learning and using fire data.
Applications of fire data beyond a Standards of Cover or Accreditation.

Watch the webinar

Facts about NFIRS

NFIRS is the world’s largest, national, annual database of fire incident information.
The NFIRS database comprises about 75 percent of all reported fires that occur annually.
Every U.S. state and the District of Columbia reports NFIRS data.
The Department of Defense and the Native American Tribal Authority participate in NFIRS.
Participation in NFIRS is voluntary.
24,112 fire departments reported in NFIRS in 2018.
Participating fire departments reported about 28.4 million incidents, including 1.2 million fires in 2018.
Thirty-eight fire departments with a protected population of over 500,000 participate in NFIRS.

Get help using NFIRS

NFIRS Help Desk

We’re here to answer your questions about NFIRS Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. Eastern time. You can contact us by:

Asking your question online.
Calling 888-382-3827.
Sending an email to FEMA-NFIRSHELP@fema.dhs.gov.

Contact your state program manager

If you have question about NFIRS in your state, please contact your NFIRS state program manager.

Subscribe to our email list

To stay current on national NFIRS news, system alerts and coding bulletins, subscribe to our email list.

Coming soon

NFIRS marketing toolkit

We’re partnering with the International Association of Fire Chiefs to increase NFIRS awareness and participation and to improve data quality. Our NFIRS toolkit will help you to market the benefits of using NFIRS to fire departments, other organizations and communities. Expected release date: September 2020