Connecticut · NERIS
NERIS reporting in Connecticut
Volunteer, career, and combination: Connecticut's 263 fire departments split three ways, and the combination share here runs well above what neighboring states in this same directory report. That mix moves who ends up filing the report from one call to the next.
Fire departments in Connecticut
- Departments in the directory
- 263
- Volunteer departments
- 63%
- Volunteer or combination
- 88%
- Stations
- 858
150 of 240 departments that report a department type
210 of 240 departments that report a department type
reported by 248 departments
Across the 234 Connecticut departments that report staffing, the directory holds 9,140 volunteer firefighters and 4,497 career firefighters; 67% 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.
A department count split three ways, not two
Connecticut’s directory lists 263 fire departments. Of the 240 that answered whether they run career, combination, or volunteer staffing, 150 are volunteer, 60 are combination, and 30 are career. A quarter of the departments that answered blend paid and volunteer staffing under one roof, rather than sitting cleanly on one side of that line. Vermont and Pennsylvania, two other volunteer-heavy states in the same snapshot, report combination shares closer to 8%. Connecticut’s fire service is built out of mixed departments far more often than either.
That split matters for who actually opens the NERIS form after a call. In a department carrying both a paid crew on shift and a volunteer roster filling the rest of the week, the person who answers a Tuesday-afternoon run is not reliably the same person, or even the same kind of member, who answers the one at two in the morning. The reporting job moves with whoever was on duty, rather than sitting with one fixed person the way it tends to in a fully volunteer company.
More firehouses per department than the total alone suggests
858 stations are reported across 248 of Connecticut’s 263 departments: 3.5 stations for every department that answered, more houses per department than New Jersey’s 2.4 or Pennsylvania’s 1.6 in the same file. A Connecticut department is more likely to be running several separate companies than a department in either of those states, which means an incident and the report that follows it don’t always start from the same building the department is headquartered in.
What the trial doesn’t ask you to settle first
None of that has to get sorted out before you try this. Recording an incident and getting back a structured version of it doesn’t need an account, a roster, or the separate NERIS authorization a department sets up later to actually submit calls — it works the same whether the call landed on the paid shift or the volunteer one.
Worth knowing about Connecticut
Connecticut's directory lists 263 fire departments. Of the 240 that report a department type, 150 are volunteer, 60 are combination, and 30 are career — a quarter of the typed departments are combination rather than purely one or the other.
Source: snapshot: CT.department_count, CT.by_department_type, CT.departments_with_type_data
That 25% combination share (60 of 240) is well above Vermont's 8% (17 of 202) and Pennsylvania's 8% (144 of 1,814) — Connecticut blends paid and volunteer staffing inside a single department far more often than either neighbor in this snapshot.
Source: snapshot: CT.by_department_type/CT.departments_with_type_data compared against VT.by_department_type/VT.departments_with_type_data and PA.by_department_type/PA.departments_with_type_data
858 stations are reported across 248 of Connecticut's 263 departments — 3.5 stations for every department that answered, more houses per department than New Jersey's 2.4 or Pennsylvania's 1.6 in the same file.
Source: snapshot: CT.station_count_sum, CT.departments_with_station_data compared against NJ.station_count_sum/NJ.departments_with_station_data and PA.station_count_sum/PA.departments_with_station_data
Across the 234 Connecticut departments that report staffing, the directory counts 9,140 volunteer firefighters against 4,497 career — 67% volunteer by headcount, a smaller majority than Vermont's 88% or Pennsylvania's 93%.
Source: snapshot: CT.firefighters_volunteer_sum, CT.firefighters_career_sum, CT.departments_with_staffing_data compared against VT and PA figures for the same fields in the same file
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
Some Connecticut departments apply for Assistance to Firefighters Grant funding, and that application asks about call volume, staffing, and day-to-day operations. Nothing in this repository tells us whether NERIS reporting factors into how AFG applications get scored, and a reporting vendor is a poor place to learn a federal program's actual rules — read the notice of funding opportunity itself for that. The plain, narrow point we'll make: a season of incidents already on file is faster to summarize into an application than one that still needs reconstructing from memory or a paper log.
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 Connecticut call
Record one incident, read the report it produces, and decide from there. No account, no card, no call with anyone.
FireMic is a private company. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or recommended by any Connecticut 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.