Idaho · NERIS

NERIS reporting in Idaho

Idaho's fire service runs mostly through volunteer and combination departments, but the state's own directory doesn't answer every question about them at the same rate. NERIS doesn't wait for the gaps to close before it wants a report.

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Fire departments in Idaho

Departments in the directory: 240
Volunteer departments: 59%
Volunteer or combination: 89%
Stations: 493

Across the 199 Idaho departments that report staffing, the directory holds 3,416 volunteer firefighters and 2,058 career firefighters; 62% 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 type field Idaho mostly answers

Of Idaho’s 240 fire departments, 196, or 82%, have answered what type they run: 115 volunteer, 60 combination, 21 career. Combination departments alone make up 31% of that group, a bigger share than Connecticut’s 25% or Vermont’s 8% in this same snapshot, and it changes who’s likely to be the one filing a report after a call — a combination department mixes paid and volunteer members on one roster, not always the same person twice.

Switch from counting departments to counting people and that volunteer lean gets smaller. Of the 199 Idaho departments that report firefighter staffing, the directory holds 3,416 volunteers against 2,058 career, or 62% of the headcount. That’s well under the 89% of typed departments running on some volunteer staffing (115 volunteer plus 60 combination, out of 196). Idaho’s paid firefighters look concentrated into fewer departments than the type split alone would suggest.

Stations answered, population mostly not

Stations get answered about as often as department type does: 196 of Idaho’s 240 departments report a count, totaling 493 between them, which comes to 2.5 for every department that answered, more than one firehouse apiece. Population protected is the field this directory leaves mostly blank here: only 50 of the 240 departments have filled it in, summing to 1,175,576 people, a fifth of the roster and too thin to call a statewide coverage number.

Where that leaves the person filing

Record one incident using your own words, then read back what the report turns it into before deciding anything else about your department’s setup. That step doesn’t touch a NERIS account, a roster, or the authorization step a department handles later to actually submit; it only asks for one call, talked through once, from whoever answered it.

Worth knowing about Idaho

Idaho has 240 fire departments in the NERIS public directory, and 196 of them report a department type — 115 volunteer, 60 combination, and 21 career.
Source: snapshot: ID.department_count, ID.by_department_type, ID.departments_with_type_data
Combination departments are 31% of the 196 Idaho departments that report a type (60 of 196) — a bigger share than Connecticut's 25% or Vermont's 8% in the same snapshot.
Source: snapshot: ID.by_department_type, ID.departments_with_type_data compared against CT.by_department_type/CT.departments_with_type_data and VT.by_department_type/VT.departments_with_type_data
Combine volunteer and combination and 175 of the 196 typed departments — 89% — run on some volunteer staffing, against 21 typed career only.
Source: snapshot: ID.by_department_type, ID.departments_with_type_data
Across the 199 Idaho departments that report firefighter staffing, the directory counts 3,416 volunteers against 2,058 career — 62% of the headcount, well under the 89% of typed departments running on some volunteer staffing.
Source: snapshot: ID.firefighters_volunteer_sum, ID.firefighters_career_sum, ID.departments_with_staffing_data, ID.by_department_type, ID.departments_with_type_data
493 stations are reported across 196 of Idaho's 240 departments — 2.5 for every department that answered — while only 50 of the 240 report the population they protect, summing to 1,175,576 and too thin a slice of the roster to total into a statewide figure.
Source: snapshot: ID.station_count_sum, ID.departments_with_station_data, ID.population_protected_sum, ID.departments_with_population_data, ID.department_count

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

AFG — the Assistance to Firefighters Grant — asks an applicant to describe how the department runs: call types, staffing, equipment. Reports that are already filed and current make that description faster to write than a stretch of calls nobody has written up yet. What this page won't do is tell you NERIS reporting decides AFG eligibility or scoring — that isn't established anywhere in what we've reviewed, and a state marketing page is the wrong place to learn a federal program's actual rules. Read the program's own instructions for that part.

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 Idaho call

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