Iowa · NERIS

NERIS reporting for Iowa's volunteer fire departments

Iowa counts 805 fire departments in the NERIS directory, and only 902 stations across the ones that report one, barely more than one apiece. Whoever caught the call is very often the same person left to file the report on it.

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Fire departments in Iowa

Departments in the directory: 805
Volunteer departments: 89%
Volunteer or combination: 95%
Stations: 902

Across the 524 Iowa departments that report staffing, the directory holds 10,092 volunteer firefighters and 2,597 career firefighters; 80% 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.

Close to one station per department

Iowa’s directory holds 805 fire departments. Among the 747 that report a station count, the total comes to 902, enough to put almost exactly one station against each department that answered, not a smaller set of departments each running several houses. Most Iowa departments are built around that single building, which means the incident reports NERIS now wants usually start and end at the same address, written up by whoever was riding in the truck that answered the call.

The field Iowa’s directory answers least

Not every field in Iowa’s own directory gets filled in at the same rate. 658 of the state’s 805 departments answered what type they run, 747 reported a station count, and 524 reported staffing — a majority of the roster on all three. Population protected breaks that pattern: just 66 departments, about 8% of them, have a figure entered for it. NERIS doesn’t ask an incident report for population coverage, but the gap says something true about which parts of Iowa’s paperwork get done on the side: the fields that take five minutes and a phone call to confirm get answered, and the field that means digging up a number nobody keeps handy gets skipped.

One station, one person, one report

Of the 658 Iowa departments with a reported type, 587 are volunteer and 38 more are combination, so 95% run on volunteers in some form. The 524 departments that report staffing count 10,092 volunteer firefighters against 2,597 career. Put a single-station department on top of those numbers and the person who answered the call is, more often than not, also the one left to describe it to NERIS afterward. Whether that goes any faster here is easiest to test on one real call: talk it through once, look at what the report turns into, and weigh that against however it’s getting filed today. Nothing about that first try needs your department’s NERIS login or its roster, just one incident, talked through.

Worth knowing about Iowa

Iowa has 805 fire departments in the NERIS public directory.
Source: snapshot: IA.department_count
Of the 658 Iowa departments that report a department type, 587 are volunteer, 38 are combination, and 33 are career — 89% are typed purely volunteer, and volunteer-or-combination together reach 95%.
Source: snapshot: IA.by_department_type, IA.departments_with_type_data
747 of Iowa's 805 departments report a station count, totaling 902 stations between them — about 1.2 stations for every department that reported one, close to a single building per department rather than a network of several.
Source: snapshot: IA.station_count_sum, IA.departments_with_station_data
Across the 524 Iowa departments that report staffing, the directory counts 10,092 volunteer firefighters against 2,597 career firefighters — 80% of everyone counted is a volunteer.
Source: snapshot: IA.firefighters_volunteer_sum, IA.firefighters_career_sum, IA.departments_with_staffing_data
Only 66 of Iowa's 805 departments — about 8% — report a population-protected figure, well behind how completely the type (658), station (747), and staffing (524) fields are filled in for the same state.
Source: snapshot: IA.departments_with_population_data, IA.department_count, compared against IA.departments_with_type_data, IA.departments_with_station_data, IA.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

AFG — the Assistance to Firefighters Grant — asks applicants to describe their calls and how the department runs day to day, same as it would for any department in the country. We haven't found anything that ties NERIS reporting to how those applications get scored, so this page won't claim one exists, and a vendor guessing at federal grant rules isn't worth listening to anyway. What holds up regardless: a department answering those questions from reports already on file is starting from a better position than one reconstructing a season of calls from memory while the application is open.

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 Iowa 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 Iowa 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.