Guide

NERIS questions departments actually ask

Direct answers where we have a source, and an honest "ask the official source" where we do not. Nothing here is guessed.

What is NERIS?

NERIS, the National Emergency Response Information System, is the federal incident reporting platform for US fire departments. It replaced NFIRS as the national standard on February 1, 2026.The full explainerUSFA on NERIS

Who runs NERIS?

The U.S. Fire Administration, in partnership with the Fire Safety Research Institute (part of UL Research Institutes) and DHS Science and Technology. The portal itself lives at neris.fsri.org.neris.fsri.org

Is NERIS reporting mandatory for my department?

NERIS is the federal standard, but whether and how your department must report is set by your state. We do not publish state reporting mandates here because we could not verify all of them; your state fire marshal is the authoritative source for yours.Your state’s NERIS page

What happened to NFIRS?

NFIRS was retired as the national standard when NERIS replaced it on February 1, 2026. Filing new NERIS reports does not migrate your historical NFIRS data, so keep whatever exports your department already has.What structurally changed

Do NERIS incident types map one-to-one to NFIRS codes?

No. NERIS types are a three-level text hierarchy, and some NFIRS codes split into several NERIS types while others collapse together. We deliberately do not publish a guessed mapping; Oregon’s State Fire Marshal has published a crosswalk for its departments, and the NERIS data dictionary is the authoritative reference.Search every NERIS type, freeOregon’s crosswalk (PDF)

How does a department get a NERIS account?

Through the official NERIS sign-up, followed by the onboarding steps on the NERIS portal. It is a department-level account; individual members are added within it.NERIS department sign-upNERIS onboarding

How does reporting software connect to NERIS?

Through the NERIS API, and only after the department authorizes it: someone with the Admin role in the department’s NERIS account enrolls the vendor’s Client ID under Account → Enrollments. It takes about two minutes, and the department can revoke it the same way.Choosing NERIS software

Can I file a NERIS report by voice?

Yes. FireMic turns a spoken account of the call into a filled-in NERIS report: you talk it through, review and correct every field, and file it to NERIS through the official federal API. You can try it in the browser with no account; filing to NERIS requires your department’s authorization.How voice-to-NERIS works

Where do I get official help with NERIS?

The NERIS helpdesk, run by UL. The user reference and technical reference on the portal cover most questions about the platform itself.NERIS user referenceNERIS.Helpdesk@UL.org

FireMic is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of USFA, FSRI, FEMA, any state fire marshal, or any other government agency. If an answer here goes stale, the official links above win.