Illinois · NERIS

NERIS reporting in Illinois

Illinois runs 1,104 fire departments, most of them typed volunteer, but the people staffing them split almost evenly between volunteer and career. NERIS asks the same questions of every one of them, however the roster is split.

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Fire departments in Illinois

Departments in the directory: 1,104
Volunteer departments: 65%
Volunteer or combination: 84%
Stations: 2,075

Across the 970 Illinois departments that report staffing, the directory holds 15,350 volunteer firefighters and 18,097 career firefighters; 46% 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.

Two numbers that don’t move together

Start with two numbers that point in different directions. The NERIS directory carries 1,104 Illinois fire departments, and of the 1,006 that report a type, 657 are volunteer, 185 are combination, and 164 are career, with volunteer departments outnumbering career departments roughly four to one. Staff those same departments, though, and the gap nearly closes: across the 970 Illinois departments that report firefighter counts, the directory holds 18,097 career firefighters against 15,350 volunteers, 54% career to 46% volunteer, close enough to call it a near-even split. A department count that leans hard volunteer and a headcount that comes out almost tied means Illinois’s volunteer departments tend to be small, and its career departments aren’t clustered into just a handful of big cities carrying the state’s headcount by themselves.

A directory that mostly gets filled in, except one field

Most of Illinois’s fields are unusually complete for a state this size: 91% of departments report a type, 96% report a station count, 88% report staffing. Station reporting adds up to 2,075 stations across 1,058 departments, just under two stations for every one of them that answered. Population protected is the exception: only 361 of the 1,104 departments, just under a third, have entered a figure, summing to 4,153,529, well short of the completeness the other fields show. Whatever is keeping that field blank for two-thirds of the roster, it isn’t the same thing keeping the type or staffing fields blank, because those are close to fully answered.

Where the reporting load actually lands

Nothing about those two numbers changes who actually sits down to write the incident up. With volunteer departments spread this evenly across the state, and no small cluster of career departments carrying most of the headcount by themselves, the reporting load doesn’t concentrate in a handful of big houses — it’s spread across however many of the 1,104 departments ran a call that week, in whatever mix of paid and volunteer staff they had on the truck. Recording that call once, out loud, and reading back what it turns into is the same offer here as it is anywhere else in this directory: try it against one incident you already ran, no department account needed to see what comes back.

Worth knowing about Illinois

The NERIS public directory carries 1,104 Illinois fire departments, and 1,006 of them — 91% — have reported a department type: 657 volunteer, 185 combination, 164 career.
Source: snapshot: IL.department_count, IL.departments_with_type_data, IL.by_department_type
Of those 1,006 typed departments, 842 (84%) are volunteer or combination and 164 (16%) are career only — volunteer departments outnumber career departments roughly four to one.
Source: snapshot: IL.by_department_type, IL.departments_with_type_data
Across the 970 Illinois departments that report firefighter staffing, the directory counts 18,097 career firefighters against 15,350 volunteers — 54% career, a far narrower gap than the four-to-one split in department types.
Source: snapshot: IL.firefighters_career_sum, IL.firefighters_volunteer_sum, IL.departments_with_staffing_data
2,075 stations are reported across 1,058 of Illinois's 1,104 departments — 96% of the roster answered, working out to just under two stations for every department that did.
Source: snapshot: IL.station_count_sum, IL.departments_with_station_data, IL.department_count
Only 361 of Illinois's 1,104 departments — just under a third — have entered a population-protected figure, summing to 4,153,529; that field is far less complete than type, station, or staffing data.
Source: snapshot: IL.population_protected_sum, IL.departments_with_population_data, IL.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

Illinois's fire service isn't one organization applying for federal money — it's however many of the state's 1,104 departments choose to apply, each on its own schedule, each describing its own call volume. The Assistance to Firefighters Grant application asks about that call volume and how a department operates. Nothing here claims NERIS reporting counts toward that application one way or the other; that determination lives in the program's own guidance, not on a page built by a company that sells reporting software. What's true independent of that question: an application is quicker to fill out from a set of reports that's already current than from a year of calls somebody still has to piece back together first.

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 Illinois 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 Illinois 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.