Colorado · NERIS

NERIS reporting in Colorado

Colorado's fire departments split three ways: career, combination, and volunteer. None of the three is close to a majority on its own, and NERIS asks the same report of whichever one answers the call.

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Fire departments in Colorado

Departments in the directory: 331
Volunteer departments: 47%
Volunteer or combination: 81%
Stations: 1,118

Across the 283 Colorado departments that report staffing, the directory holds 5,078 volunteer firefighters and 7,254 career firefighters; 41% of those counted are volunteers.

Source: the NERIS public department directory, as mirrored in our departments table on July 28, 2026. Percentages are stated against the number of departments that actually reported the field, which is always shown next to them. Departments that reported nothing are not counted as zero and no figure here is estimated.

Three department types, and none of them a majority

Colorado’s fire service doesn’t sort neatly into “mostly volunteer” or “mostly career” the way some states do. Of the 281 departments that report a type, 133 are volunteer, 96 are combination, and 52 are career. Volunteer is the largest single group, but at 47% of typed departments it isn’t a majority on its own. Combine it with combination departments and the share only then clears 81%. That spread matters for anyone assuming their department’s reporting problem looks like their neighbor’s: in Colorado, the neighbor is about as likely to be running a different staffing model entirely.

Where the paid staff actually are

Count people instead of departments and the shape changes again. Across the 283 Colorado departments that report staffing, the directory holds 7,254 career firefighters and 5,078 volunteers. Career firefighters are the larger group by headcount, in a state where volunteer is the larger group by department count. The paid staff cluster into a smaller number of career and combination departments; the volunteer headcount is spread across the 133 departments typed as volunteer, each one carrying its own incident list and filing its own reports.

More houses than departments

Colorado also reports more stations than it has departments answering the question: 1,118 stations across 293 departments, 3.8 for every one that reported. A department running several houses doesn’t get to file a single report per incident. NERIS keeps each responding unit as its own record, so a three-station department produces more per-call reports than a one-station department run by the same number of people, whether its crews are salaried or on a pager.

What the trial shows without asking which kind you run

None of the above changes what the review screen looks like once a call comes in — a career engine crew and a two-person volunteer squad answer the same NERIS modules for the same incident type. The quickest way to see what that looks like for your own department is to record one real call, read back what came out of it, and decide from there. It doesn’t touch your roster, your department’s records, or its NERIS enrollment.

Worth knowing about Colorado

Colorado has 331 fire departments in the NERIS public directory. Of the 281 that report a department type, 133 are volunteer, 96 are combination, and 52 are career — the largest group, volunteer, still falls short of half.
Source: snapshot: CO.department_count, CO.by_department_type, CO.departments_with_type_data
Combine volunteer and combination departments and the share rises to 229 of the 281 typed departments — 81% — running on volunteers to some degree, even though no single type on its own reaches a majority.
Source: snapshot: CO.by_department_type, CO.departments_with_type_data
1,118 stations are reported across 293 of Colorado's 331 departments — 3.8 stations for every department that answered, not a one-house-per-department state.
Source: snapshot: CO.station_count_sum, CO.departments_with_station_data
Across the 283 Colorado departments that report staffing, the directory counts 7,254 career firefighters against 5,078 volunteers — career firefighters outnumber volunteers by headcount even though volunteer is the largest department type by count.
Source: snapshot: CO.firefighters_career_sum, CO.firefighters_volunteer_sum, CO.departments_with_staffing_data

What changed

NERIS replaced NFIRS as the federal fire incident reporting standard onFebruary 1, 2026. It is a different shape of report, not a renamed one: modules instead of flat forms, a three-level text hierarchy instead of numeric incident codes, and an API instead of a file you upload.

What actually changed, in detail · NERIS onboarding (FSRI) · Department sign-up

About grant applications

Colorado departments that apply for an Assistance to Firefighters Grant are asked to describe their operations and their call history as part of that application. This page will not tell you what AFG scoring does or does not take from NERIS reporting — that determination belongs to the program's own notice of funding, not to a records vendor. The plain, checkable point: an application is faster to fill out from incident reports that are already filed than from a stack of calls that still need to be written up.

We are a vendor, not a grant advisor. Do not take our word for what any grant program requires. Read the current notice of funding opportunity or ask your state's grant coordinator.

Try it on a real Colorado call

Record one incident, read the report it produces, and decide from there. No account, no card, no call with anyone.

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FireMic is a private company. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or recommended by any Colorado state agency, USFA, FSRI, or FEMA. State fire officials do not endorse vendors, and nothing on this page should be read as suggesting otherwise.

Department figures: FireMic Supabase departments table (mirror of the NERIS public department directory, ArcGIS layer 0). Snapshot taken July 28, 2026.