Massachusetts · NERIS

NERIS reporting in Massachusetts

Massachusetts doesn't split cleanly into volunteer or career; combination departments are the largest single group here, and their headcount leans far more toward paid staff than the department count alone suggests. NERIS asks the same questions of all three.

Try it free

Fire departments in Massachusetts

Departments in the directory: 370
Volunteer departments: 22%
Volunteer or combination: 63%
Stations: 1,144

Across the 348 Massachusetts departments that report staffing, the directory holds 2,243 volunteer firefighters and 14,570 career firefighters; 13% 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.

Career, not volunteer, is the closer second place

Massachusetts has 370 fire departments in the NERIS public directory. Of the 365 that report a department type, 150 are combination, 134 are career, and 81 are volunteer. Combination leading the count isn’t unique by itself; Delaware (36 of 59 typed) and New Hampshire (98 of 213) also have combination as their largest single category. What’s different here is who comes second. In both Delaware and New Hampshire, volunteer is the clear runner-up and career trails well behind. In Massachusetts it’s reversed: career (134) sits close behind combination (150), and volunteer (81) is the smallest of the three. Add volunteer and combination together and 231 of the 365 typed departments, 63% of them, still carry some unpaid staffing, but the department count on its own undersells how much of the work here runs through paid crews.

New Hampshire is the only one of Massachusetts’s neighbors in this directory with the same combination-led shape. Count firefighters instead of departments and the resemblance stops. New Hampshire’s headcount is 46% volunteer. Massachusetts’s is 13% — 2,243 volunteer firefighters against 14,570 career, out of 16,813 counted across the 348 departments that report staffing. A Massachusetts combination department leans on paid staff in a way a New Hampshire one, on average, does not. Stations follow the same pattern: 1,144 reported across 367 Massachusetts departments, 3.1 per department that answered, against New Hampshire’s 1.7.

What doesn’t change once you know which category you’re in

None of that sorts out who has to file the report. A career shift commander and a volunteer riding the same engine both work through the same module list and the same three-level incident hierarchy once the call is over. Recording one incident and reading back what comes out of it doesn’t require figuring out first which of Massachusetts’s three staffing types your department falls into, or an account to try it.

Worth knowing about Massachusetts

Massachusetts has 370 fire departments in the NERIS public directory. Of the 365 that report a department type, 150 are combination, 134 are career, and 81 are volunteer — combination is the largest single group, ahead of career and volunteer taken separately.
Source: snapshot: MA.department_count, MA.by_department_type, MA.departments_with_type_data
Delaware (36 of 59 typed departments) and New Hampshire (98 of 213) are two other states in this file where combination is also the largest department type, but in both of them volunteer is the clear second place. In Massachusetts, career (134) is closer to combination (150) than volunteer (81) is.
Source: snapshot: MA.by_department_type/MA.departments_with_type_data compared against DE.by_department_type/DE.departments_with_type_data and NH.by_department_type/NH.departments_with_type_data
Volunteer and combination departments together are 231 of the 365 typed Massachusetts departments — 63% — even though pure volunteer departments (81) are the smallest of the three categories on their own.
Source: snapshot: MA.by_department_type, MA.departments_with_type_data
Across the 348 Massachusetts departments that report staffing, the directory counts 14,570 career firefighters against 2,243 volunteers — 13% of the counted headcount is volunteer.
Source: snapshot: MA.firefighters_career_sum, MA.firefighters_volunteer_sum, MA.departments_with_staffing_data
New Hampshire is the only one of Massachusetts's neighboring states in this directory where combination is also the largest single department type, yet New Hampshire's firefighter headcount is 46% volunteer against Massachusetts's 13%.
Source: snapshot: MA.firefighters_volunteer_sum/MA.firefighters_career_sum/MA.departments_with_staffing_data compared against NH.firefighters_volunteer_sum/NH.firefighters_career_sum/NH.departments_with_staffing_data; VT, CT, RI, and NY each show volunteer, not combination, as the largest typed category in the same file
1,144 stations are reported across 367 of Massachusetts's 370 departments — 3.1 stations for every department that answered, against New Hampshire's 1.7 stations per department in the same file.
Source: snapshot: MA.station_count_sum, MA.departments_with_station_data compared against NH.station_count_sum, NH.departments_with_station_data
202 of Massachusetts's 370 departments report a population-protected figure, summing to 3,999,536 — a real number, but from just over half the departments, not a statewide count.
Source: snapshot: MA.population_protected_sum, MA.departments_with_population_data, MA.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

Departments in Massachusetts that apply for Assistance to Firefighters Grant funding answer questions there about call volume, staffing, and how the department runs day to day. Nothing we've reviewed ties AFG scoring to NERIS filing status, and a software vendor isn't where to check that against — the funding notice itself is. The plain, narrow point: those application questions get answered faster from an incident record that's already on file than from a stretch of runs that still has to be pieced back together afterward.

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 Massachusetts call

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