What Is Community Risk Reduction (CRR)? A Guide for Fire Departments
In 2024, 3,920 civilians died in fires across the United States. That’s up 6.8% from the year before, and it’s 37% higher than the record low the country hit back in 2012. Read that again. After four decades of smoke alarm campaigns, tougher building codes, and public education, the number is climbing, not falling. A […]
NERIS Fire Data Analytics for Smarter Decisions
How NERIS Data Helps Fire Chiefs Make Smarter Resource Decisions For years, the data on your desk was already old by the time you read it. A chief building a 2024 staffing case was often working from 2022 call volume, because NFIRS frequently delayed reporting by more than a year. NFIRS was built in 1975. […]
2026 Fire Service Index: Fire Department Data
What 2026 Fire Department Data Tells You About Your Own Operation Pull your department’s call log from last year and ask one question: how many of those runs were actually fires? For most departments, the answer sits around 3 percent. That’s one finding from the 2026 Fire Service Index, which analyzed more than 10.2 million […]
AI-Powered Fire Department Software: How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Fire Operations
The fire department software market was worth $1.25 billion in 2025. By 2035, it’s projected to hit $3.77 billion, an 11.7% annual growth rate driven almost entirely by AI and cloud adoption. That’s not a future trend. It’s a shift already underway, and for chiefs evaluating their next technology investment, understanding where the market is […]
AHJ (Authority Having Jurisdiction) in Fire: What It Means & Why It Matters
Here’s something that surprises most people in the fire service: authority is spread across tens of thousands of separate agencies. The NFPA counts roughly 29,452 fire departments in the U.S. alone, on top of the municipal, county, and state offices that enforce code. It’s the reason the term AHJ in fire work is less a […]
What Is NERIS? The National Emergency Response Information System Explained
NFIRS served the American fire service for nearly 50 years. As of February 2026, it’s gone. The National Fire Incident Reporting System that your department fed incident data into since the 1970s has been fully retired, and in its place is NERIS – the National Emergency Response Information System. This isn’t a future deadline to […]
What Is a NERIS Entity ID? How Fire Departments Get Set Up in the System
As of 2026, NFIRS no longer accepts new incidents. The National Fire Incident Reporting System ran for nearly 50 years, and now it’s gone. Every fire department in the country reports through NERIS instead. In order to do that, your department needs a NERIS Entity ID. Most chiefs already know NERIS is required. What’s less […]